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No 28

Alternative Cinema in the 80s

JUMPQijf

A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY CINEMA

$2.00

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ABROAD

TOOTSIE

POLTERGEIST • Counter Cinema and Godard

OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN • THE VERDICT
Radical Film in Peru and Mozambique • REDS

The example of Picasso is not only relevant to
artists. It is because he is an artist that we
can observe his experience more easily. His ex¬
perience proves that success and honour, as offer¬
ed by bourgeois society, should no longer tempt
anyone. It is no longer a question of refusing
on principle, but of refusing for the sake of
self-preservation. The time when the bourgeoisie
could offer true privileges has passed. What
they offer now is not worth having.

—John Berger

A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY CINEMA

TOOTSIE

Mixed messages

Deborah H. Holdstein

First, the good news. TOOTSIE is a wildly
successful film at the box office. And it ap¬
pears that the film represents the consummate
group effort: three directors, approximately
twenty script rewrites (with such notables as
Elaine May and the Barry Levinson/Valerie Curtin
team), and Writers' Guild arbitration over who
should get screen credit. TOOTSIE'S dialogue
seems unrelentingly witty, snappy, and downright
hilarious, with filmgoers and critics alike
thrilled at Hollywood's "new feminism," its
raised consciousness, its preoccupation with
important social issues.

And that makes the news less good. Filmgoers
love TOOTSIE. Mainstream critics love TOOTSIE.
Inexplicably, however, these same critics gloss
over or reject the film's implicit sexism and
the mixed "feminist" message that undercuts it¬
self in deference to the system that produced
the picture. It depicts women as weak, power¬
less, banal emotional blobs, saved only by a
man's inspiring assertiveness in the guise of a
soap-opera actress-heroine in designer blouses.

Dustin Hoffman plays two roles in TOOTSIE—
Michael Dorsey, unemployed, temperamental actor,
and the woman he "becomes" in order to land a
job, Dorothy Michaels. He succeeds, getting the
role of Emily Kimberly, hospital administrator
on a successful soap. He begins to ignore girl¬
friend Sandy (Teri Garr) as the "Michael" that's
really "behind Dorothy" begins to fall in love
with his co-star, Julie (Jessica Lange). The
inevitable complications ensue.

Critical response unintentionally illustrates
both the film's misleading "virtues" and its
implicating, patriarchal structure. Even the
diction in the reviews themselves reveals conde¬
scension toward women vanquished only temporar¬
ily because "Tootsie" is really a man whose
words are taken seriously:

Michael dresses up as a hopeful actress
named Dorothy Michaels, who is a shy
Southern belle until she opens her mouth.
Out of that mouth comes the most assertive
and appealing kind of feminism imaginable
[emphasis added]. . . . Simply stated, the
TOOTSIE thesis is you are what you wear.
Simply by putting on a dress, Michael Dor¬
sey becomes more polite, less contentious,
and more likely to defer to his superiors
. . . women are so often trapped into sub¬
servience because, well, a dress is not a
suit.l

being a woman or a man. It celebrates the in¬
herently "wonderful sensitivity" of Michael's
"feminist" inclinations and the implication that
it's the “woman inside the man" that has brought
him around to egalitarian insight. Not really.
The film itself continually undercuts any pseudo¬
feminist "statements" it tries to make through
characterization, point of view, and the overall
structure of the film. TOOTSIE'S message is
loud and clear: only because of a man can a
woman achieve any modicum of greatness or rise
from the mire of self-doubt and psychological
trauma. Only through a man will a mass-audience
"feminist" message be taken seriously.

Michael/Dorothy's role as the sole voice for
women's issues is further aggravated by the
film's other women. As his suicidal -maniacal
girlfriend Sandy, Teri Garr becomes, in Kael's
sincere words, "the funniest neurotic dizzy on
the screen. "5 Fine. Yet Sandy is unable to get
an acting job; in fact, Michael beats her out
for the Kimberly soap opera role. Michael runs
lines with her before the audition and Sandy
tells him that he does a woman better than she
can! She can't even "get her rage back" for the
audition unless he goes with her and "keeps her
angry." Worse, Michael treats Sandy poorly,
thoughtlessly victimizing hei — and even stealing
her job!

notion that it takes a man in woman's clothing
to articulate the needs of the women around him?
That it takes a maij--perhaps radiating the
strong assertiveness only he can "do so natural¬
ly"— to politicize and inspire the almost stere¬
otypical ly weak women around him to stand on
their own two feet? And, most alarmingly, that
it takes a man-as-wornan, speaking sincerely
about "feminist" issues, to convince the sexists
in the audience, as well?

The insult permeates the structure and content
of the film, especially when one considers the
initial information which types Hoffman's char¬
acter. Michael Dorsey is thirty-nine, only in¬
termittently employed as an actor but the finest
of professionals. Dedicated to his acting stu¬
dents but picky and hellish for establishment
theater folk to work with, Dorsey's characteri¬
zation as a man devoted to people and his craft
unfolds during the opening credit-montage. As
the center of a circle of students, he's looked
upon as a respected mentor, a victim of the the¬
ater establishment, a wise veteran of acting
"wars." And because he's difficult to work
with, his agent calls him a "cult failure." No
one will hire Michael Dorsey.

Therein lies the crucial economic reason just¬
ifying his audition in woman's clothing for the
role of hospital administrator Emily Kimberly on
the daytime drama, "Southwestern Hospital." Af¬
ter all, only dire straits will justify a cloth¬
ing sex change: Jule Andrews was starving to
death in VICTOR/VICTORIA; Jack Lemmon and Tony
Curtis witnessed the St. Valentine's Day Mas¬
sacre before they resorted to an all -girl band
in SOME LIKE IT HOT, gangsters in pursuit. But
lest we further dare to question Dorsey's heter¬
osexuality, the scene of his surprise birthday
gathering has him trying to pick up every woman
at the party. The lines? "Oh, yeah, you were
in Dames at Sea — you've got a great voice. You
know, I felt like there was an aura between us
in the theater." This allegedly feminist film,
then, must go to great lengths to assure its
audience that the protagonist is "legitimate"—
straight. Dorsey seems as much of a voyeur sex¬
ist as the men he'll rail about as Dorothy.

Critical commentary such as this underscores the
essentially patriarchal structure of TOOTSIE
(not to mention the attitudes of the critics
reviewing it). Michael Dorsey is not really
more polite when he becomes Dorothy— if any¬
thing, it's the "manliness" of this woman that
many people admire while paradoxically condemn¬
ing her for her rather homely appearance.

When Michael/Dorothy goes to audition for the
soap opera, s/he teaches the blatantly sexist
director, Ron, a "feminist lesson": he wants a
"broad caricature of a woman," he tells her, as
"power is masculine and makes a woman ugly."
First, Ron's caricature as "male chauvinist pig
supreme" is so broadly drawn as to be uncon-
structive in teaching us anything about how peo¬
ple shouldn't act— no one could ever see himself
in Ron, a cartoon figure who defeats any preten¬
sions the film might have had to him as a "fem¬
inist bad example." Second, when Michael/Doro¬
thy calls Ron a "macho shithead" and yells
"Shame on you!" for his stereotyped images of
power, the patriarchy surfaces. Dorothy is "un¬
attractive." Dorothy is really a man. Obvious¬
ly, then, the so-called "feminist message" dis¬
solves into visual images that tell us the oppo¬
site: Dorothy is powerful in telling off Ron--
Dorothy is homely. And the other women in the
film are beautiful, powerless, and weak-willed.
Thus, TOOTSIE perpetuates these unfortunate sex¬
ist stereotypes, as well as the antiquated as¬
sumptions about any connection between a woman's
physical appearance and her intelligence. Fi¬
nally, it must be remembered that the only per¬
son to successfully "call" Ron on his sexism is
really a man. And, I fear, it's the only way
many people in a representative audience would
take such a "feminist" message seriously.

One critic acknowledges that "the movie also
manages to make some lighthearted but well -aimed
observations about sexism, "2 while Carrie Rickey
of the Village Voice names it to her list of the
top ten films of 1982.3 Pauline Kael celebrates
the fact that "Michael is thinking out Dorothy
while he's playing her— he's thinking out what a
woman would do. "4 Is there no insult to the

Jessica Lange's Julie, the woman with whom
Michael falls in love while pretending to be
Dorothy, is also weak and unassertive. The com¬
plication, inevitably, occurs when Julie becomes
"Dorothy's" best friend; the film seems to tell
us that Julie's never had such a wonderful
friendship with a "woman" before, as if being
close, woman-to-woman, were unnatural. Manipu¬
lated by her director/boyfriend, Ron, Julie
drinks too much. Only Dorothy's advice and sup¬
port and her improvised dialogue as ultrafemin¬
ist Emily Kimberly redeem Julie. And yet
Lange's Julie is evidently supposed to be a
"liberated" woman in the positive sense, but
here again whatever liberation there is is thor¬
oughly undercut. A single mother in "real
life," Julie plays, in her words, "the hospital
slut" of the soap. Surely audience response
connects the damning term "slut," given Julie's
emotional insescurity and weakness, to her dis¬
organized existence, as the film subtly but un¬
mistakably implies a parallel between her TV
role and her life. When Julie believes that
Michael/Dorothy is a lesbian, she acknowledges
her "stirring feelings," but we remind ourselves
that Dorothy's "really a man"— Julie's "feel¬
ings," therefore, must be heterosixual and "nat-

Further, Michael justifies his role as a woman
by creating a parallel between the plight of
unemployed artists and women— "I've got a lot I
can say to women." The film would have us be¬
lieve that it really doesn't take much to be a
woman at all, that women lack enough individual¬
ity or identity as a group that a man can "do"
her very well, without anyone noticing or ques¬
tioning.

In spite of this, TOOTSIE'S allegedly feminist
intent appears to illustrate the problems of

Continued on page 32

JUMP CUT NO. 28

^UMPcUL

No. 28

Films

TOOTSIE (Sydney Pollack, 1982)

Deborah H. Holdstein

DINER (Barry Levinson, 1982)

Deborah H. Holdstein

POLTERGEIST (Steven Speilberg, 1982)

Douglas Kellner

REDS (Warren Beatty, 1981)

John Hess

Chuck Kleinhans

THE VERDICT (Sydney Lumet, 1982)

Phyllis Deutsch

VICTOR/VICTORIA (Blake Edwards, 1982)

Mark Bernstein

E.T. (Steven Speilberg, 1982)

Phyllis Deutsch

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN (Taylor Hackford,

1982)

Jon Lewis

CHARIOTS OF FIRE (Hugh Hudson, 1981)

Ed Carter

BIRGITT HAAS MUST BE KILLED (Laurent Heynemann,
1982)

Hal Peat

WHITE ZOMBIE (Victor Halperin, 1932)

Tony Williams

COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER (Michael Apted, 1980),

HONEY SUCKLE ROSE (Jerry Schatzberg, 1981), and
THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA (Ron
Maxwell, 1981)

Mary Bufwack

Articles

The Mammy in Hollywood Film

Sybil DelGaudio

Saturday Afternoons

Marty Gliserman

Radical Film in Peru Today: An Interview with
Pancho Adrienzen

Buzz Alexander

Film Reborn in Mozambique: An Interview with

Pedro Pimente

Clyde Taylor

Liberation ... In Reverse

Lary Moten

Special Section: Alternative Cinema in the 80s

Introduction

Chuck Kleinhans

Independent Features at the Crossroads

Lynn Garafola

"We don't have films you can eat": Talking to
the D.E.C. Films Collective

Margaret Cooper

WE ARE THE GUINEA PIGS (Joan Harvey, 1981)

Doug Eisenstark

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ROSIE THE RIVETER (Connie
Field, 1982)

Sue Davenport

SUSANA (Susana Blaustein, 1980)

Claudia Gorbman

The Films of Sharon Couzin

Gina Marchetti

Carol Slingo

New U.S. Black Cinema

Clyde Taylor

Theory

Epic Cinema and Counter Cinema

Alan Lovell

Godard and Gorin's Left Politics, 1967-72

Julia Lesage

Counter Cinema— A Bibliography from JUMP CUT

Julia Lesage

Critical Dialogue

Sexual Politics

Cathy Schwichtenberg

Tap Dancing

John Fell

In Print

The Celluloid Closet y by Vito Russo

Martha Fleming

The Hollywood Social Problem Filmy by Peter
Roffman and Jim Purdy

Jeremy Butler

Covering Islamy by Edward Said

Michael Selig

Reports

Government Censors Pick Best Short

Janine Verbinski

Puerto Rico's Super 8 Festival

Maria Christina Rodrigez
Rodriguez 64

Latinos in Public Broadcasting: The 2% Formula

Jesus Salvador Trevino

Racism, History, and Mass Media

Mark I. Pinsky

Photography

Jean Seberg and Information Control

Margia Kramer

The Last Word

Terry Santana

The Editors

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NEWS AND NOTES

The Cinema Guild (a division of Document Associates) is now distributing
the films made by the Pacific Street Films people, Steven Fischler and Joel
Sucher. They have been producing socially conscious documentaries since 1969
For further information on the Pacific Street Films library contact Cinema
Guild, 1697 Broadway, Room #802, New York, NY, 10019. (212) 246-5522.

The Oral History of the American Left (OHAL) at Tamiment Library, New York
University, has received funding from the NEH to create an archive of inter¬
views made by independent filmmakers. For more information contact Jon Bloom
or Dan Georgakas, OHAL, Tamiment Library, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70
Washington Square South, New York, NY, 10012. (212) 598-7754.

Media Network and the Reproductive Rights National Network are looking for
information on films, videotapes, and slideshows on reproductive rights and
related topics. The two organizations are compiling a Guide to Media on
Reproductive Rights for use in educational work and organizing. Those who
know of media that should be included in the book, or who want more infor¬
mation, should contact Abigail Norman or Aimee Frank at Media Network, 208
West 13th Street, New York, NY, 10011. (212) 620-0878.

Resources for Feminist Research in Canada is bringing out a special lesbian
issue in May. It will include discussion articles, research, guides to lesbian
organizations and international periodicals, book reviews, film, video, and
slide show listings, and annotated bibliographies. This issue will be devoted
to an examination of the lesbian experience in Canada and explores areas which
have previously received little attention from researchers. Copies are $5.00
and can be ordered from RFR/DRF, Dept, of Sociology, Ontario Institute for
Studies in Education, 252 Bloor Street W, Toronto, Ontario, MSS 1V6, Canada.

The new 1983 editions of the Progressive Periodicals Director
published, providing people with up-to-date information on some 500 progres¬
sive periodicals from across the USA. For more information contact Progressive
Education, Box 120574, Nashville, TN, 37212.

"Alternatives to Hollywood" will be explored by the 1983 Ohio University
Film Conference from October 19 to 22. The avant-garde, the New German
Cinema, television and video will be examined as possible alternatives to
Hollywood. For further information contact Annette Preuss, Conference co¬
ordinator, P.O. Box 388, Athens, OH, 45701.

CONTRIBUTORS

BUZZ ALEXANDER teaches courses on Vietnam and Latin American cinema at
the University of Michigan. He recently wrote Film on the Left (Prince¬
ton, 1981)... MARK BERNSTEIN is a Yellow Springs, OH film critic. . .While
teaching at Colgate, MARY BUFWACK is completing a book on the history of
women in country music. . .JEREMY BUTLER teaches film at the University of
Alabama. ..ED CARTER is a film critic living in New York. . .MARGARET COOPER
has worked in film distribution and exhibition in the USA and Canada...
Co-director of THE CHICAGO MATERNITY CENTER STORY, SUE DAVENPORT teaches
history and women's studies at Northern Illinois University. . .SYBIL DEL-
GAUDIO teaches film at the New School and at Brooklyn College. . .PHYLLIS
DEUTSCH is a New York area film critic. . .JUMP CUT editor DOUG EISENSTARK
teaches video at Global Village in New York... JOHN FELL teaches at San
Francisco State and has written extensively on early film. . .MARTHA FLEMING
lives and works in Montreal, writing for Aftcrimagey Parachutey and
Fi<se...LYNN GARAFOLA has written on and worked in the arts in England and
The USA... MARTY GLISERMAN teaches literature and film at Rutgers. . .CLAUDIA
GORBMAN teaches film at Indiana University and has published articles on
film music and sound.. JUMP CUT editor DEBORAH HOLDSTEIN teaches English,
writing and film at Illinois Institute of Technology. . .DOUGLAS KELLNER
has recently co-edited Passion and Rebellion y a new book on German Expres¬
sionism. . .MARGIA KRAMER is a New York artist... JON LEWIS teaches literature
at Hobart and William Smith College. . .Freelance critic and teacher, ALAN
LOVELL has covered the film scene in England and the USA for many years
...After completing her dissertation on punk and glitter subcultures,

GINA MARCHETTI is studying film in Paris... LARY MOTEN has worked with
Haile Gerima on several films... HAL PEAT is a freelance writer living in
Los Angeles. . .MARK PINSKY is a well known journalist working the Southern
beat... MARIA CHRISTINO RODRIGUEZ works on the Spanish-language newspaper
Claridad. . XklWl SCHWICHTENBERG is a film grad student at the University
of Iowa. . .MICHAEL SELIG is completing a dissertation at Northwestern Uni¬
versity. . .CAROL SLINGO wrote on 9 TO 5 in JUMP CUT No. 24/25 and is writ¬
ing a novel .. .CLYDE TAYLOR helped organize the African Film Society in
San Francisco and now teaches at Tufts University... Filmmaker JESUS SAL¬
VADOR TREVINO has long worked at KCET in Los Angeles. . .Berkeley grad
student JANINE VERBINSKI works with JUMP CUT in Berkeley. . .TONY WILLIAMS
lives in Manchester, England and has recently co-authored Italian Western:
The Opera of Violence,

CO-EDITORS

John Hess, Chuck Kleinhans, Julia Lesage

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Edith Becker, Peter Biskind, Julianne Burton, Michelle Citron,

Nancy Edwards, Doug Eisenstark, JoAnn Elam, Jane Gaines, Kathy

Geritz, Helene Langer, Ernie Larsen, Sherry Mi liner, Dana Pol an
(Books), B. Ruby Rich, Kimberly Safford, Robert Stam, Peter

Steven, Linda Vick, Tom Waugh, Judy Whitaker, Linda Williams,

Doug Zwick

ASSISTANT EDITORS

Lisa DiCaprio, Gretchen Elsner-Sotnner, Debbie Holdstein, Ana

Mohager, Susan Pollack

TYPING

Lyn Heffernon, Maryann Oshana, Linda Turner

And thanks for helping to:

Nicole Firenz, Rachel Kleinman, George Mitchell, Lary Moten,

Janine Verbinski

JUMP CUT is published about four times a year by JUMP CUT Associates, a
nonprofit organization. Unless otherwise noted, all contents (^ 1983 by
JUMP CUT. Editorial offices: P.O.Box 865, Berkeley, CA, 94701 (business
office) and 2620 N. Richmond, Chicago, IL, 60647. WRITERS please send ad¬
dressed stamped envelope for "Notice to Writers" before submission. Also
please send two or three copies of reviews and articles. This will help
us respond to you more quickly and prevent loss of manuscripts. JUMP CUT
is a riiember of COSMEP; indexed in the International Index of Film Period-
icalsy the Alternative Press Indexy and the Film Literature Index'y ab¬
stracted in Sociological Abstracts. Microfilm copies: University Micro¬
films International, Ann Arbor, MI, 48106. UK subscriptions by the Motion
Picture Bookshop, National Film Theatre, South Bank, London, SEl 8XT.
Overseas Trade Distribution: Full Time Distribution, 27 Clerkenwell Close,
London, ECIR OAT. ISSN: 0146-5546. Printed in South San Francisco by
Alonzo Printing. JUMP CUT, No. 28 published in April, 1983.

JUMP CUT NO. 28

DINER

The politics of nostalgia

—Deborah H. Holdstein

By now, we've all heard that DINER is the previously unsung (now, we can
assume, sung) "sleeper" of this past film season. Heralded as "sensitive"
and a "mix of nostalgia and autobiography" by Chicago film critic David
Kerr (Chicago Reader^ 9 July 1982), DINER seems to fit neatly into a rather
ambiguously-titled category: the "slice-of-life nostalgia piece," the re¬
cognizable plight of a group of young men growing up in the Baltimore of
1959. Critics nationally ecjjp Kerr's sentiment, as words such as "touch¬
ing" and references to Levinson's "thoughtful" story and direction appear
in writings as diverse as Gene Siskel's (2 July 1982, Chicago Tribune) and
Pauline Kael's (5 April 1982, New Yorker).

Yet as Proust discovered when he bit into the madeleine^ nostalgia and
the things remembered often reveal more than one initially thought. Per¬
haps our popular critics have forgotten this, as in the case with DINER, a
film whose strengths go far beyond those of a pleasant film on which writer/
director Barry Levinson has "imposed a light layer of thought and analysis"
(Kerr, Reader).

On the one hand, the film troubles many viewers— women and men alike—
who see it as an exclusive, wholly "male" film, celebrating the joys and
trials of being a "good-young-boy" in a transitional, important stage.
Indeed, women are in peripheral roles in DINER as they have been at the
periphery of the patriarchy. Levinson merely duplicates or at best
"mirrors" life-as-it-was in a characteristic U.S. film and literary genre,
but, it is easily argued, these young men have a place in society--unlike
the women in the film — which insures most of them a fairly good lot in life.

On the other hand, with the clarity of hindsight, I find certain social
truths more readily revealed in older films and, occasionally, in films
that purport to celebrate the painful -but-engaging "good old days." That
is, even if Levinson did not intend to make a film offering an expressly
. political commentary, DINER does reveal that the patriarchy victimizes even
those who are the victimizers: men.

So while DINER is an overtly entertaining, pleasant, and— yes— "sensi¬
tive" film, my reading may permit it to be an important one. DINER does
remind us not only of those simple, black-and-white days of 1959 (huge,
oversized picture tubes, GE COLLEGE BOWL, blissfully raw rock 'n roll), but
also of the fact that even the films we call "entertainment" can be essen¬
tially political— even without the director/writer's deliberate intention,
and often in spite of it.

DINER vividly etches the lives of young men (and very few women) with a
cross-section of the U.S., white. Eastern population. It unintentionally
but vividly illustrates that the patriarchal status quo also stifles men.
Within the first sequence, DINER sets up numerous parallel oppositions
which it sustains throughout: people versus society, men versus women, men
versus men, the media versus daily reality, and men's fantasy-women versus
the women men marry. For each of these pairs, Levinson reveals, if uninten¬
tionally, the hypocrisy within us all, within the myths that sustain young
men through their young adulthood while threatening their very existence,
their sense of themselves.

The film makes striking parallels between popular culture and the media
and their integration within one's sense of self. The characters' "machis¬
mo," their preoccupations with the media, their bets about "making it" with
certain women, aren't as much the villainy of traditional sexism as frantic
signs of their knowing no other way to be in the world.

Thus, Boogie uses the automobile and the movies as a forum for his sexual
conquests. Although the film presents him as a more tender version of the
"macho mystique," part of his image includes his specifically noting his
"conquests." Eddie, the football expert, will get married because "it's
time, you know, and she's not a ball -breaker. If she was a ball -breaker,
then, well, man, no way'." Bal 1 -breaking or its equivalent seems fine when
it comes from the man's direction, however. Out of his own insecurity,

Eddie designs for his fiancee a fabulously difficult "ball -breaking foot¬
ball qui^." If she scores lower than a 65, he'll call the wedding off.

Most viewers perhaps rightly view DINER as a slice of the oppressive
life, an ultimately celebratory view of men in their traumatic years. But
to see the film only as this, in my view, doesn't acknowledge the injustices
We all suffer within the same, oppressive system. DINER may be erroneously
conceived as mere apolitical nostalgia by audience and critic alike; the
film's structure and deceptively simple technical style belie the suffering
and trials that go along with being a man or woman in the capitalist world,
as well as realizing an unarticulated but desperately obvious need for a
coi.iprehensive male and female release from a constricting status quo.

I propose an expansion of the term "political film," since many film
critics propogate a restrictive, assumptive definition, implying that if a
film is not expressly "political," i.e., dealing in a "political theme,"
then its content cannot be political at all. (In my view, this would
parallel the view of women we see in most films, implying to the woman in
the audience that she cannot be other than a peripheral figure in a man's
world.) Occasionally, good, politically instructive and uplifting messages
can come in small, rather delightful, witty packages— even those, like
DINER, which seem apolitical or at best a standard-bearer for the patri¬
archy.

In a Sunday edition of the New York Times (18 July 1982), critic Robert
Sklar discusses the fate of the "political film," using terms that restrict
the genre to films that handle "hot issues":

If you have a message, ran the old Hollywood maxim, send it by Western
Union. Movies aren't meant to be about the real world. ' Forget elec¬
tions and politicians, strikes and working conditions, race and class
antagonisms, dictators and foreign wars. People go to movies to es¬
cape all that.

But as many filmgoers realize, people don't escape "all that," especially
when we view much of what we see on the screen (eliminating, of course,
science fiction, fantasy, costume drama, etc.) to be representational and
"real" mirrors of the way we are or should be in the world. The politics
are subliminal, built into such things as characterization, social class,
and the entire narrative.

Sklar does his movie-going public a disservice by limiting his defini¬
tion of "political films" to those treating expressly "political subjects"
such as war in PATHS OF GLORY, Vietnam in COMING HOME, injustice and pover¬
ty in THE grapes OF WRATH, and political satire vs. nuclear destruction in
DR. STRANGELOVE. The political film cannot merely be a genre which speci¬
fically treats "social problems." The political film can encompass all
film, particularly those which, innocuously hidden behind Hollywood or popu¬
lar sanctions, seem least political. What is more "political" than the

relationship between women and the world? Of human beings trying to find
a place in a society that defies them to do it?

My reading of DINER comes out of this contention: the Hollywood genre
film implies political and social content through its allegedly simplistic
structures, characters, and plots. Behind these lie assumptions about
class, the patriarchy, and our places within these. If Aristotle was
correct in believing that art teaches by holding up a mirror to the reali¬
ties of our society, then, I believe, DINER has several lessons for us.

To my mind, DINER'S political dimension is evident from the opening se¬
quence. In fact, the lack of a dominant contrast within a crowded, messy,
mise-en-scene may confuse viewers: we're not sure where we're supposed to
be looking. What seems to be Levinson's lack of technique reinforces one
of the movie's significant qualities: the "everyperson" within each human
being, as well as the uniqueness of those on the screen and those in the
audience. The sequence emphasizes that whatever the soon- to-be-determined
main characters have to go through is something identifiable to each person
at the crowded sock-hop and to each person in the audience. In effect,
Levinson begins the film against the grain of cinematic status quo: this
will not be a film of fantasy or "stars," and our heroes will not be notable
in the traditional sense of the word. In this first scene, they blend in
with the crowded scenery — they're just people.

Consequently, the opening content, apparently hampered by muffled dia¬
logue and a seeming lack of visual center, may become somewhat lost. Visu¬
ally, in the background we see some of the men, who will later emerge as
protagonists, talking excitedly, while couples in 1959-vintage finery jit¬
terbug in the fore-and middle-ground. Only after a first cut do we realize
that Boogie (a representative of the upwardly-mobile working class, who
goes to law school to impress women) has learned that Fenwick (who has a
rather meager stipend from the family trust fund and represents "old money")
has gotten drunk again and is wandering in the dance hall basement, break¬
ing windows with his fist "for a smile." Fenwick has just sold his date
for five dollars to another young man (out of insecurity, we later learn).

His action is described so that it seems incidental to the scene, but it
reflects and foreshadows much of the film. The male characters treat women
as buyable and sellable. All this isn't condoned by the director, but it
parallels the possession-consciousness of the 1950s: "having" represented
status, whether having a record collection or a wife.

The most important narrative information here seems to be that Boogie
hopes to break out of the working class through law school, and that Boogie
and Fenwick pair in an exemplary illustration of male bonding: we begin to
understand that Boogie and the others are Fenwick's super-egos, bailing the
insecure youth out of his drunken pranks. And it is in this early scene
that young men's architectural metaphor for collective bonding is first
announced: "See you later at the diner."

The diner itself stands as the major fantasy metaphor of the film. It
becomes a sort of "ivory tower" in which the men are protected. The wait¬
resses do the men's bidding (and usually are the only women there), circu¬
lating on a first-name basis within the male arena. The diner houses most
of Boogie's confrontations with the loan shark; but since he's later bailed
out of his debt by a friend of his late father, he never has to "do battle."
The diner creates a playworld for verbal machismo. And the playland con¬
trasts with home. Food, nurturing, love, are commodities always available
at the diner, always on credit of need be, with few, if any, questions
asked.

Media and the sports are constant topics of conversation, and relations
with women become either occasions for male competition and/or male bondingi
or they become secondary in importance to male concerns with media and
sports. Ue see this in the way Eddie expresses his fear of change and
women. As he says to Billy, his best man at his wedding, "If you talk, you
always got the guys at the diner— you don't need a girl to talk." Eddie
asks Billy to reaffirm the impossible— that things will always stay the
same and never change. He wants men to be able to stay the same, "exclu¬
sive," leaving women outside the circle. Indirectly, Eddie seems to be
pleading for a way out of the same expectations he's been raised with, for
a solution to his poor preparation for interacting with another human being,
a woman. Each of the men, in his own way, clings to the familiar male
clique he's become so comfortable with. The male characters do not just
exhibit a typical fear of change; rather, they seem to constantly express a
wish for a way out— that is, to have the night-long conversations with men
at the diner. The men at the diner illustrate the products of a society
that hasn't prepared them— or allowed them— to cope.

Shrevie (the married one) works in a television sales shop. There, June
Allyson appears in mid-fifties splendor in a televised film crying, "Oh,

I'm never getting married, neverl" Shrevie's employment fits him well:
his identity is especially tied to popular culture, rock 'n roll. He tells
Eddie that he and his wife Beth never have more than a five-minute conversa¬
tion, but that with the guys "he can talk all night."

Shrevie uses his specialized knowledge as a weapon with which to victim¬
ize Beth; he arranges his records in a complicated, alphabetical -chronologi¬
cal fashion. Since Beth doesn't have his zeal for music nor his obsessive

knowledge of dates, flip sides, and artists, she does not carefully rear¬
range the discs she's played. The couple's argument about this not only
humiliates her but also delineates the non-existent foundations of many
traditional marriages— marriage is just something to do, allowing the man
to have and possess a wife. Shrevie and Beth's fight masks the real issues
of their relationship. Women are to be closed out of the man's world.

Could she share his love of music even if she knew all the trivia? As
Shrevie says:

Before you get married, all there is is talk about the wedding— the
plans, you know, and sex talk. You know, when can we DO it? Are your
parents going to be out so we can DO it? Where can we DO it? Then,
after you get married, she's there all the time; when you wake up in
the morning, she's there. When you come home from work, she's there...
There's no more sex talk. Nothing else to talk about. ...But it's
really good, you know, it's ok, it's goodi

While Beth and Shrevie's marriage is apparently reconciled at the film's
end, Levinson vividly depicts their marraige as one in role only. DINER
presents men in their early twenties who apparently have been so discouraged
from truly interacting with other human beings, women, that Shrevie finds
his only true marriage with his buddies at the diner.

Beth, on the other hand, doesn't even "feel pretty anymore." She softly
says, "I don't even know who I am." Her acceptance by and success with men
seem to have rested entirely on her looks— this seems to have been the sole
reason for her marriage. When she feels "shut out" from the man's world and
loses her entire self-esteem, she uses "femininity" as the way to survive.
She's not been allowed to develop any interests, as have the men. As a
prisoner of society's "decorative" expectations, she hasn't considered de¬
veloping the rest of herself, either. And the men's obsessive preoccupa¬
tion with popular culture, as in Shrevie's case, these pseudo-scholarly
defenses against human— male and female— involvement and interaction, have
affected the women cruelly.

family and society culminates in this manger sequence. Here, the inscrut¬
able, carved faces of the "wise men" look mutely on in a series of quick,
mediimi-close cuts. And we also see Fenwick's growing dependence on alco¬
hol. After this escapade, Fenwick is more than just ignored and scorned by
his father and older brother. They insist that he spend the night in jail
rather than be bailed out, like his friends, because "it would be good for
him, teach him responsibility." His plea for attention is completely mis¬
understood, as are his abilities.

Fenwick's talents are seen only in his private life. His shining moment
comes as he watches and talks back to a broadcast of the old TV series, GE
COLLEGE BOWL. With bright, intelligent eyes and quick, sharp responses,
Fenwick gets the answers— tough questions, too— before the "nerds" from
Cornell or Byrn Mawr can even think to ring their answer-buzzers. His hand¬
some face in medium close-up is shot at slightly high angle, the strength
of his intellectuality perhaps dwarfed technically to illustrate his vulner¬
ability, his victimization, the hopelessness of his plight within a society
that perceives him as a bum for rejecting the family business.

In fact, Fenwick's loyalty to his friends is so great— another trait un¬
appreciated by his family— that he tells Boogie that he will visit his bro¬
ther to ask for a loan to help Boogie out of his financial crisis. This is
significant, for Fenwick hates his brother— and with good reason. The next
sequence, then, heightens our vision of Fenwick's entrapment. He meets his
brother Howard on Howard's front lawn because Howard won't let him inside;
he's a "bad example." Howard scornfully tells Fenwick: "If you had a job,
you would have the money to help your friend out yourself! I'm going to ask
father to lower your stipend!" And in direct, contrapuntal insult to the
scene we've just witnessed— which revealed Fenwick's vast store of knowledge,
his sharp, quick abilities and kindness towards his friends— Howard bites,
"Have you ever even read a book?" And in technical contrast, Fenwick here
is pushed off to the left side of the screen, while the taller, more formid¬
able Howard dominates the right. Even when Fenwick backs his brother up
against a tree, trying in vain to convince him of the importance of his mis-
s1on("I hate you, Howard, I despise you, but I'm here. Doesn't that say
something? I'm here anyway"), here Fenwick appears in the image very much
"below" Howard, his powerlessness emphasized by an over-the-shoulder shot
from near Howard's point of view, taken at high angle.

The high angle enforces the viewer's sense of Fenwick's vulnerability,
entrapment, and victimization within the system that rightly "should" be
his. We witness the paralysis that befalls young men who are not encour¬
aged to develop their own strengths, especially if they diverge from the
interests of the "family business" or society at large. They are damned
for being themselves, so that Fenwick's private use of television is fine
for showing off— it doesn't talk back, judge, condemn, or force Fenwick to
display his talents publicly, to risk anything. Unfortunately, he tries to
get attention by public displays of "bad behavior." Since apparently he's
never been praised for being "good" in any way, much less in his own way,
"badness" is all that's ever worked as an attention-getter. One surprising
result of looking at DINER as a political film stems from seeing men become
the other eventual victims of their own patriarchal system.

In another instance where the media serves as metaphor, Billy, a college
student from out of town who will be Eddie's best man, wants to marry Bar¬
bara, a television producer. In this instance, the media helps foreshadow
an early manifestation of feminism. Barbara, although pregnant in pre¬
liberation America, rightly fears that she'll jeopardize her budding career
as a television producer, and refuses to marry Billy. As the couple is ar¬
guing, their particular, rather poignant situation parallels the TV soap
operas that beam from monitors at Barbara's studio: the dialogue of the
characters on TV could well be theirs. The soap operas reflect real life,
and vice-versa, we are to believe.

Boogie decides to use the discouraged, neglected Beth to replace a girl¬
friend who had gotten the flu. One night, unbeknownst to either woman.
Boogie had bet a good deal of money that he'd "ball" the first girl friend,
and that several of his cronies would hide in a closet to watch. Beth ap¬
pears satisfied and no longer angry when' Boogie later confesses that he in¬
deed "respects her" and couldn't have gone through with it. However, Beth
wraps her entire view of herself on whether or not Boogie means what he
said: that prior to her marriage, she had really been a "hot number,"
"really good." This sequence reveals the sadness of both characters'
plight: Boogie's need to be a cool, slick "operator" to reinforce his
sense of maleness, and Beth's need to remain the perfect, desirable decora¬
tion even though she's married, a "drudge." Our relief at what appears to
be Boogie's moral decision clouds when we realize how sad it is that the
characters' means toward self-worth is as narrowly defined as it is. Un¬
fortunately, Beth and Boogie are— like the others— the perfect products of
their society. That society provided them an ironic "nurturing incapacity,'
which made them prisoners within their prescribed roles. DINER depicts the
final conversation between Beth and Boogie with a simple, eye-level two-
shot, both characters leaning against Boogie's car. This mise-en-scene
technically underscores the sad "equality" of their role-imprisonment.

Another fantasy-reality dichotomy is at play within the Shrevie-Beth-
Boogie connection in DINER. Beth must wear a blond wig during the scene
with Boogie in which she's his "substitute date" so that the other fellows
will think she's the "hot number," Carol. Masquerade becomes even more
crucial now that Boogie's really out with his best friend's wife. In fact.
Boogie doesn't know that Beth's husband Shrevie had joined Fenwick (hiding
in the apartment closet) to witness the sexual conquest.

Shrevie observes Beth and Boogie from an upper window as they arrive,
not recognizing the woman he's married to, the woman who for inexplicable
reasons is not good enough for him. He comments, "Wow, there's Carol. Oh,
God, she's beautiful." Of course, in the dark he doesn't really see her at
all. But the fantasy perception of beauty triumphs as always— what we ima¬
gine our gods or goddesses to be, they are. Predictably here she's blonde,
tall, perfect, wasp— or as the men in DINER call their most desirable type,
"death."

Beth seems to be the everywoman who ever felt left out by her man. Her
place seems several steps physically and psychologically behind the joking,
secret-sharing "guys," begging for clarification like the youngest child
who isn't old enough to share in her older siblings' most wonderful games:
•'Well, who's that?" or "Who's that you're talking about?" Women aren't
male enough, "regular" enough to know things right off. And of course, she
never goes to the diner.

Levinson reveals, however, that women aren't the only ones who are vic¬
timized. Fenwick of the meager trust fund provides a striking, poignant,
tragic example. Interestingly, the film shows his plight at its extreme by
having him interact with popular culture images— another media parallel.

Fenwick's need for attention is so great that he arranges his own arrest
while drunkenly ruining the manger scene decorations in front of a local
church on Christmas day. He, in fact, removes his clothes and ccxnfortably
ensconces himself in the cradle of the child Jesus. He then fights against
his friends who try to get him into the car before the police arrive. Later
he breathes an audible sigh of relief as his mission, an arrest, is accomp¬
li shed--and he sets off for a night in jail.

Fenwick obviously craves attention from his friends in a rather unique,
often destructive sort of way, and one might wonder if it was the only way
he could get any attention as a child. The film implies that he has suf¬
fered his insecurities at the hands of his older, tight-lipped brother, the
forbidding Howard, as well as his father. The obvious symbolism of Fen-
Wick-infant's need for attention and his victimization by his immed.iate

JUMP CUT NO. 28

POLTERGEIST

Suburban ideology

-- Douglas Kellner

Steven Spielberg is emerging as the dominant
ideologue of affluent middle class America. In
JAWS (1975), Spielberg depicts th*e transforma¬
tion of Chief Brody from an antiheroic everyman,
incapable of either stemming the economic and
political corruption on the island or eliminat¬
ing the shark, to a middle-class hero-redeemer
who single-handedly destroys the shark and re¬
stores order to the community.! Brody thus be¬
comes the first of Spielberg's middle class
heroes. Whereas the novel Jaws showed the sexu¬
al and class antagonisms between Brody and his
wife, the film projects their closeness and
love, presenting one of Spielberg's first ideal¬
izations of the middle-class family.

Although CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND
(1977) shows the Richard Dreyfuss character torn
away from his family and allegorically depicts
the family's being torn apart by events and
forces outside of its control, POLTERGEIST and
E.T. elaborate idealized views of the family and
the suburban middle class. Spielberg seems the
most effective cinematic chronicler of affluent
middle-class life-style, joys, and fears in con¬
temporary US society. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, POL¬
TERGEIST, and E.T. affectionately depict the
commodity comforts offered by a consumer so¬
ciety. POLTERGEIST and E.T. show the rising
affluence in the split-level suburban tract
houses with their ever more advanced electronic
media, toys, appliances, and gadgets. Spielberg
celebrates this lifestyle and can be seen as
film's dominant spokesperson for middle-class
values and social roles.

Most interesting in Spielberg's recent films
is his symbolic projection of contemporary US
insecurities and fears. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS alle¬
gorically presents fears of losing one's family,
job, and home, and it contains a scarcely dis¬
guised yearning for salvation through extra¬
terrestrial forces, for deliverance from contem¬
porary problems--a theme also present in E.T.
but more pronounced in the novel ization than in
the film. In its depiction of UFOs and aliens,
the film reverses the 1950s alien-invasion
films' codes, which depicted aliens as monstrous
threats to the existing order.. CLOSE ENCOUN¬
TERS, POLTERGEIST, and E.T. contain the fantasy
that somehow beneficient forces will alleviate
threats to our security and well-being.

Ideologically, Spielberg's films traverse a
contradictory field that in different films, or
even in different scenes within a given film,
celebrate and legitimate middle-class United
States' institutions and lifestyles or yearn for
spiritual transcendence or both. E.T. mobilized
its alien figure to highlight the commodities
and joys of suburban family 1 ife--without, in¬
terestingly enough, the figure of the Law of the
Father. The film depicts an alliance between
the middle class and transcendent alien forces.
God may no longer be on our side, but the aliens
seem to be. The film reassures the middle class
about their values and lifestyle and offers fan¬
tasies of reassurance that alien forces or the
Other will be friendly and nonthreatening.

POLTERGEIST, on the other hand, symbolically
probes both universal and specifically contem¬
porary US fears. It presents the shadow-side of
suburban life in the form of an allegorical
nightmare and also an utopian vision of the fam¬
ily pulling together and pulling through in the
face of adversity and eventually triumphing over
demonic forces. By articulating US fears and
showing them conquered, the film defuses the
nightmare quality of life in the US horror
show. By depicting with affection its resi¬
dents, houses, goods, toys, and electronics, it
presents advertisements for a US way of life
which defines happiness in terms of middle-class
lifestyle and consumption. Spielberg's films
thus stand as clever ideological fables and do
not just offer the pure fantasy entertainment
which his defenders celebrate. His films are
carefully constructed ideology machines, planned
in detail with elaborate storyboard models,
carefully crafted scripts, and cunningly calcu¬
lated special effects. Although he may or may
not be a class-conscious ideologue, Spielberg's
effectiveness as a purveyor of ideology derives
from his identification with the affluent middle
class and its way of life, which he appealingly
reproduces.

Here I want to examine POLTERGEIST for what it
shows about contemporary US society and Spiel¬
berg's ideological strategems.2 The film at¬
tempts to manipulate its audience through care¬
fully planned, carefully paced jolts, special
effects, frightening scenes, sentimental depic¬
tions of a loving family, and the assuring pres¬
ence of technology, professionals, and spiritual
powers. I shall first focus on POLTERGEIST'S
storyline and themes and ideology. Then I shall
reflect on Spielberg's ideological problematic
and his use of the occult.

with corpses which return to life and destroy
their house. The film uses the conventions of
the horror-occult film, currently the most popu¬
lar Hollywood genre, to explore suburban middle-
class psychic and social landscape. The family
unit contains a father, Steve Freeling, his
wife, Diane, a teenage daughter, Dana, who is
more connected to her friends than to her fami¬
ly, a young boy, Robbie, and little Carole Anne,
who is about five and the first to make contact
with the poltergeists. The Freelings live in
one of the first houses built in phase one of a
housing project called Cuesta Vista. The father
is a successful real estate salesperson who has
sold 42 percent of the housing units in the
area--which his boss tells him represents over
$70 million worth of property.

The opening scenes depict the Freeling fami¬
ly's environment and show close, loving rela¬
tions between mother and father, parents and
children. The film's power derives from its
portraying the family's pulling together in the
face of forces trying to tear it apart. Such
positive images of the family have become in¬
creasingly rare in Hollywood, which instead in
recent years has celebrated the couple or the
single (usually male) parent or has ironically
and satirically dissected family life and mar¬
riage (e.g. Robert Altman, Woody Allen). POL¬
TERGEIST thus offers solace that the family
stands as a viable institution, even in the con¬
text of contemporary troubles. It is one of the
few "blockbuster" films that explicitly and un¬
abashedly offer apologetics for the family.

The Freeling family idyll soon becomes inter¬
rupted by the poltergeists' presence. At first,
they appear only to little Carole Anne through
the medium of the television set. The polter¬
geists soon begin, however, more actively inter¬
vening. They shake the house, turn on appli¬
ances, bend and play with kitchen utensils, and
make chairs slide across the floor. These
scenes, I believe, celebrate middle-class com¬
modity icons, showing the consumer society's
bounty. During the night, the poltergeists be¬
come more menacing. In the midst of a thunder¬
storm, branches of a giant tree take Robbie out
of the bedroom window; his parents desperately
retrieve him from the forces of raging nature.

At this point, little Carole Anne disappears and
the family is thrown into panic.

The father then goes to Stanford and summons a
group of parapsychologists to come investigate
the phenomena. They in turn call in a diminu¬
tive woman spiritualist who tells the family how
to deal with the poltergeists and how to get
their daughter back. With the spiritualist's
guidance, the mother enters the spirit world to
retrieve her daughter, revealing the depth of
her love and concern for the child. The mother
emerges as the moral center of the film— and of
the family. In Diane Freeling, POLTERGEIST pre¬
sents a positive image of the New Mother, who is
able to smoke dope, be sexy and modern, and yet
also be a loved wife and nurturing mother. In
response to the women's movement's critique of
"women's place," Spielberg and company answer
with the image of a mother who assumes her tra¬
ditional role while she enjoys suburban afflu¬
ence. The film thus cleverly supports tradi¬
tional roles and institutions while it presents
symbolic threats to the existing order.

As the film proceeds, it shows the house and
its objects being progressively demolished. At
first, objects fly arqund and are broken and

shattered; eventually the whole house is totally
destroyed. These scenes play on fears of losing
one's home in this era of rising unemployment,
inflation, and economic hard times. The film
evokes the horror of watching loved objects
smashed, of seeing the tokens of the middle
class systematically disintegrate. Finally the
film offers a fable about the family's walking
away from the ruins of suburban afflunce with
the comforting assurance that the evil spirits
have been vanquished, that the family is still
intact, and that all will be well.

The "explanation" for the series of polter¬
geist disturbances is that the real estate de¬
velopment company, for which the father works,
had built the housing project over a graveyard
after removing the headstones but not removing
the corpses. In the film's occultist text, the
spirits of the dead wander about in a purga¬
torial spiritual dimension, unable to leave pur¬
gatory for the white light of bliss and appar¬
ently angered by their burial ground's desecra¬
tion. After the corpses apocalyptically destroy
the house over that burial ground, Steve yells
at his boss, "You moved the cemetery! But you
left the bodies, didn't you! You son-of-a-
bitch, you left the bodies and only moved the
headstones!"

Such a plot device highlights a critical theme
in Spielberg's films and allows us to define
more precisely the specificity of his ideologi¬
cal problematic. Clearly the villain is the
greedy real estate developer who neglected to
rebury the corpses to save time and money. Sim¬
ilarly, the villain of JAWS is the corrupt busi¬
ness-political establishment which puts economic
interests over people's safety and well-being.
Spielberg does not defend the capitalist class
or the economic and political elite. His repre¬
sentations of the state and political establish¬
ment tend to be critical. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS was
initially intended to be a UFO Watergate-style
cover-up, with the state's suppressing informa¬
tion about UFOs. This theme gets displaced in
the film, but the state authorities still appear
a bit menacing and sinister in the look of the
film. Likewise, E.T. tends to present the
adult world and especially state authorities
from a low camera angle, the perspective of E.T.
and the children. Consequently, state authori¬
ties usually appear threatening and sinister,
even at the end when it appears that they are
trying to save E.T.

Spielberg thus champions the middle-class
ideologue but not the economic or political es¬
tablishment. His strategies thus reveal a cri¬
sis of ideology in the United States, where its
most powerful and effective ideologues working
^in the cinematic cultural industries cannot or
will not concoct ideological fables to legi¬
timate the economic political order. Legit¬
imating these domains was precisely the ideo¬
logical achievement of many films in Old Holly¬
wood. But Capital and the State no longer have
many successful ideological champions in Holly¬
wood, although they may have in network televi¬
sion, albeit with contradictions and question¬
able success.

SPIELBERG'S OCCULTISM

A CUNNING IDEOLOGICAL FABLE FOR OUR TIME

POLTERGEIST depicts the trials of the Freeling
family confronted with poltergeists which haunt
their house and spirit away their daughter and

Spielberg's most popular recent films, from
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS to POLTERGEIST, participate in
the resurgence of the occult which has occurred
in both Hollywood films and US society since the
end of the 1960s. When individuals perceive

that they do not have control over their lives,
they become attracted to occultism. During eras
of socioeconomic crisis when people have diffi¬
culty coping with social reality, the occult
seems to help explain incomprehensible events,
with the aid of religious or spiritualist myth¬
ologies. Many recent occult films have served
as vehicles for blatantly reactionary religious
ideologies {e.g., THE EXORCIST, THE OMEN),
whereas other filmmakers like George Romero, Wes
Craven, and Larry Cohen have used the occult to
present critical visions of American society. 3
In contrast, Spielberg's use of the occult is
neither systematically conservative-reactionary
nor critical-subversive but is marked by ambi¬
guities which characterize his ideological prob¬
lematic as a whole.

On one hand, Spielberg uses the occult to pre¬
sent rational contemporary fears: losing one's
home, seeing one's family torn apart, fear of
disease and bodily disintegration. For in¬
stance, in one of the most frightening scenes in
POLTERGEIST, a young Stanford scientist goes to
the kitchen and takes a steak out of the re¬
frigerator. We see the piece of meat undergo a
cancerlike metastasis, spewing out bizarre
growths and organs before our eyes. The fright¬
ened scientist goes into the bathroom and washes
his face and then looks into the mirror and sees
his face mutate into rotting flesh. Although
this hallucination disappears, he leaves the
house and does not return. The scene is truly
frightening as it evokes fears of cancerous
growth and bodily disintegration.

Un the other hand, Spielberg's occultism
serves as a vehicle to promote sentimental ir¬
rationalism. In his recent films, he constructs
a spiritualist metaphysics out of representa¬
tions of beneficent aliens, extrasensory per¬
ception, spirits, poltergeists, and magic 0*e.,
the children flying in E.T.). Fantasy and sci¬
ence fiction offer, of course, legitimate areas
for film to explore, but the ubiquity of the
occult in Spielberg's recent films provides an
irrational world view that feeds the already
rampant irrationalism in US society (i.e., re¬
ligious revivalism, cults, "new age" spiritual¬
ism, etc.). Moreover, his occultist fables de¬
flect people's legitimate fears onto irrational
forces and create the false impression that de¬

liverance will come from spiritual or extrater¬
restrial forces. Whereas a critical hermeneutic
might find interesting symbolic projections of
middle-class fears that relate to real socio¬
economic crisis, most of the audience probably
experiences these symbolic projections as de¬
flections of their real fears, escape from con¬
temporary US monsters. As the films promote
irrationalism and occultism, they cover over,
rather than reveal, the origins, nature, and
impact of the US nightmare on people's lives.

Yet the weakest part of POLTERGEIST comes from
the didactic occultism enunciated by the diminu¬
tive woman spiritualist, Tangina, who comes to
help rescue Carole Anne and cleanse the house of
the poltergeists. In two long, talky passages,
she delineates the phenomenology of the spirit
world and explains the source of Carole Anne's
problems and the poltergeist disturbances. The
viewer sees throughout the film manifestations
of the spirit world and is thus led to believe
in the existence of spirits and an afterlife.
Here Spielberg recycles old religious-spiritual¬
ist ideologies to reassure the audience about
its deepest fears (i.e., descent into death,
non-being, total nothingness) and provides a set
of metaphysical representations useful for tra¬
ditional religious ideologies.

Spielberg provides reassuring fantasies that
soothe fears concerning disintegration in this
life (i.e., the family, the American dream,
etc.) and in an afterlife. One of the tasks of
cinematic ideology is to enunciate fears and
then to soothe them. Spielberg magnificently
accomplishes this in his fables of reassurance.
While the contemporary United States is wracked
with deep doubts and fears concerning its socio¬
economic, political, and cultural system, Spiel¬
berg plays on these fears, finds (perhaps uncon¬
sciously) cinematic representations for them,
and offers fantasies of reassurance. His ideol¬
ogy machines are popular precisely because of
their effectiveness in enunciating and defusing
such contemporary fears. Much more interesting¬
ly than the mindless, reactionary drivel con¬
cocted by George Lucas, Steven Spielberg has
become the dominant ideologue of the middle
class, but now that he has become wealthy and
powerful, it will he interesting to see if he

JUMP CUT NO. 28

moves on to become an ideologue for the econ¬
omic-political establishment. In the meantime,
it is as ideological fables that Spielberg's
films should be interpreted and criticized.

lOn the transformation of Brody to hero-redeem¬
er, see the discussion in John Lawrence and
Robert Jewett, The American Monomyth (Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977). On the class
problematics of JAWS, see Fredric Jameson,
"Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture,"
Social Text 1 (Winter 1979). See also the
following articles and Critical Dialogue in
JUMP CUT on JAWS: Peter Biskind, "Between the
Teeth" (No. 9, October-December 1975); Dan
Rubey, "The Jaws in the Mirror" (No. 10/11,
June 1976); Robert Wilson, "JAWS as Submarine
Movie" (No. 15, July 1970). JAWS and Spiel¬
berg's other films will be discussed in more
detail in the forthcoming book Politics and
Ideology in contemporary American Film by
Douglas Kellner and Michael Ryan. This arti¬
cle is indebted to work done with Ryan on the
ideologies of contemporary film.

2pOLTERGEIST is directed by Tobe Hooper while
Spielberg is credited as producer and one of
the writers. Spielberg claims that the story
idea was his. The film concludes with, "A
Steven Spielberg Film." Alleged tensions
arose between Hooper and Spielberg, and there
is debate over whose film it really is— as if
a collective enterprise "belonged" to one per¬
son. In fact, the film offers an amalgam of
the cinematic styles and philosophies of Hoop¬
er and Spielberg. The film exhibits Hooper's
flair for the suspenseful, odd, and horrific
and Spielberg's affection for the middle-
class, fuzzy-minded occultism, and nose for the
market. In any case, there are enough Spiel -
bergian elements in it to justify analysis of
the film in terms of Spielberg's ideological
problematic.

30n the problematics and ideological contradic¬
tions in contemporary horror films, see the
studies collected in Andrew Britton, Richard
Kippe, Tony Williams, and Robin Wood, American
Sightmare: Essays on the Horror Film (Toron¬
to: Festival of Festivals Publication, 1979)
and the studies in Kellner-Ryan (forthcoming).

REDS ON REDS

—John Hess and Chuck Kleinhans

We often find ourselves intrigued with the variety of reviews of some
popular films, and we have a special interest in the divergent range of
left reviews. If nothing else, a comparison of Movement press response to
REDS shows that radical critics have provided no single radical analysis of
the film, but rather an extreme diversity. REDS offered a provocative
example for investigation. Because it dealt with the left, had a good box
office, and received the critical attention of New York critics. Directors
Guild, and Academy Awards, the left press ran many reviews and letters.

In an article in Working Papers on the left press' reception of REDS,
Linda Bamber accounts for the large, intense critical response by referring
to "the scarcity of cultural self-images available to intellectual leftists,
who are by definition outsiders to the dominant culture." Because of our
thirst for dynamic self-images within the dominant culture, we respond, she
says, to "Beatty's obviously sincere attempt to contribute to a cultural
mythology of the left..."

We couldn't resist collecting reviews of the film once we found out that
Ronald Reagan liked it (though he wished for a happy ending, according to
the New York Times) and that the Communist Party, USA, editorially praised
REDS and urged its supporters to see the film. In the film's own spirit,
we have decided to present our own set of "witnesses." By way of compari¬
son, we included a sprinkling of comments from the dominant press to show
some recurrent similarities and differences in the way critics interpreted
and evaluated REDS. For example, while everyone saw REDS as a love story
mixed with political events which were meant to stir the audience, people
reacted differently to its being that kind of romantic-political mixture.

ROMANCE

I'm a romantic. I believe in moments when life shivers with a wild
intensity. I believe that Moscow snow just has to be whiter than
starlight and that there's something exquisite and chilling about red
flags billowing above all that white. I believe art and joy, rebel¬
liousness and pathos are resources as valuable as labor and capital _

I loved the movie REDS. It inspired just the enthusiasm and caring
that emerges from the best writing of Bryant and Reed.... The lives of
Louise Bryant and John Reed are inspiring to me; their conmitment and
courage were of mythic dimensions. We need legends from our radical
past, people to serve as models from whose failures and victories we
can learn. I hope artists and writers will continue to weave tales
from that history, for it is a story rich in drama and romance.

— Jack Manno, Peace Newsletter,
publication of the broad-based Syracuse Peace Council

It is first of all a romance— staple of all themes— an^ the years of
political turmoil in which the story unfolds are meant to cast the
romance into epic proportions. Otherwise, everything is ordinary:
two people run after a Meaning in a chaotic world, going through the
tensions that a couple who have definite ideas about what they should
be [going] through, and trying to resolve the conflict between the
demands of private life and the demands of the world. In the end,
love triumphs and brings its poignancy. Tragedy comes in the shape
of death. Are we summarizing REDS or Seagal's [sic] LOVE STORY? No
matter, plot-wise, there is not that much difference.

--N.R., Modem Times,

bulletin of the Hawaii Union of Socialists

[Beatty's] gone and made a maoie, a very long and satisfying romance
wherein Reed's devotion to godless communism provides the most exotic

of backgrounds for an old-fashioned love story that few moviegoers
will have any difficulty recognizing or embracing. .. .Beatty had the
intuition to see beyond the politics, to realize, first of all, how a
patina of distance and romance would safely neutralize Reed's beliefs
until he seems no more threatening than a Rotarian....

--Kenneth Turan, California,
a glossy regional magazine

Jack has his ideals; she has him. When, near the end, the two meet up
for the last time in a train station in Moscow, REDS allows us to dis¬
cover— and feel— what is ultimately more important.

—Lawrence O'Toole, MacLean’s,
the Canadian newsweekly

The picture glorifies Reed, and the picture prevails, the motion pic¬
ture, Romance, Hollywood, True Love, True Confessions. . .she's sorry
now that she left him.

--Barbara Hal pern Martineau, Broadside,
a Canadian feminist newspaper

This is a fascinating, extraordinary film for two reasons: first, for
its beauty and political content; second, who really is this movie star
Warren Beatty, and why did he make this daring, courageous pro-revolu¬
tionary film?

—Lester Cole, People's World,
the West Coast Cpmmunist Party newspaper
(Cole was one of the jailed and blacklisted Hollywood Ten)

Hollywood playboy Warren Beatty sees something of himself in John Reed:
the unfulfilled artist. But Beatty lacks spine, sees women as transit¬
ory warm flesh, and thus tries to make the primary thing in John Reed's

life his love with Louise Bryant _ Thus we get an otherwise hackneyed

love story which would be simply trite without the backdrop of radical¬
ism and revolution.

—A San Diego comrade, Challenge/Desafio,
newspaper of the Progressive Labor Party, an Old Left sect

To some extent there is an element of romance involved. When I read
Vivian Gornick's Romance of American Corrmmim, for instance, I think
of how people really wanted to devote their lives, passionately to a
cause and get involved with it. Somehow the image that Beatty creates
is some of what hooked me into politics. A lot of that sort of poli¬
tical life in the sixties involved both personal and political grati¬
fication. So the fact that Beatty decided to try to sell the left to
the American people, and do it by figuring out what ft was that had
hooked him onto it, was a good decision;... A great deal of it has to
do with comradeship, adventure, and so on. That is certainly a lot of
the appeal of it for me— that you give your life to it; and history Is
not under your control .

—Kate Ellis, in a transcribed discussion with others in
Socialist Review, the reform socialist journal

HISTORY AND IMAGE

Most of the left discussion of REDS concerned the film's^ portrayal of
history, often comparing REDS with DR. ZHIVAGO. No one discussed the nature
of historical drama or compared the film to other dramatic historical left

y. •

films such as BATTLE OF ALGIERS or 1900, or socialist films such as OCTOBER
or LUCIA.

who hated millionaires. I notice, here at the end of the credits, a
wonderful line that reads:

Politically perhaps the most significant thing about REDS is that it
presents a powerful refutation of the anticommunist propaganda myth
that the Russian revolution was a coup perpetrated behind the backs of
the Russian people by a handful of Bolshevik plotters. REDS offers
marvelous street scenes of Petrograd during the days when the Bolshe¬
viks won political power--the ten days that shook the world. We see
the indispensible ingredient of authentic revolution— the masses of
people intervening decisively in the historical process.

—Harry Ring, The Militant,
newspaper of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party

At first, as we encounter soldiers and peasants standing at railroad
stations, we get a sense of the pregnancy of the revolution. The Rus¬
sian masses' yearning for peace has become a material force, and only
the Bolsheviks have translated it into a political program. This
motion soon climaxes in organized insurrection and undoubtedly all but
the most politically stony-hearted will find themselves thrilling to
the scenes when a martial rendering of the Internationale orchestrates
a mass workers' demonstration through the streets of Petrograd, cul¬
minating in the storming of the Winter Palace. For one magic moment,
we are all revolutionaries!

--Irwin Silber, Line of March,

Marxist-Leninist journal

...the anti-capitalist, pro-Communist poison--cleverly dispensed by
talented professionals, working with a fast-moving, literate script-
drips off the silver screen. "Property is Theft, prod aims a note
pinned to the front door of the protagonist's apartment in Greenwich
Village. .. .The overthrow of the moderate Kerensky Government in Moscow
by the Bolsheviks in October 1918... was apparently a spontaneous revolt
of the masses, rather than a Communist conspiracy.

— Robert M. Bleiberg, Barrone,
the right-wing business newspaper

The political discussions about socialism, communism and anarchism,
which were clearly the questions of the day, are handled cynically,
basically divorced from the class struggle. One exception is when
Reed was in Petrograd: at a mass meeting on what sort of support
could be expected from the international working class for the revolu¬
tion, Reed spoke for the U.S. workers, saying that they were looking
to the Russian masses for the example to seize power from the capital¬
ists.

--A Detroit Comrade, Challenge

John Reed would have loved that.

—Roger Ebert, Sun-Times,
the daily Chicago newspaper

When REDS got an R rating, Beatty appealed that decision, arguing that,
despite the strong language, his movie reclaimed an era of American
history that every schoolchild should see. The movie was subsequently
given a PG, and as exhibitors left the appeals hearing, they approached
Beatty individually and said they were proud to be showing the picture.

—David Thompson, California

Beatty is clearly fascinated by the tension in Reed between the artist-
rebel and the revolutionary who decides for the disciplined vanguard
party against his temperament. .. .REDS is something of an anti-ZHIVAGO
whose hero resolves his conflict between private and public life with
an ever deepening political commitment. Thus many reviewers like the
movie despite its political background. We like REDS because of it.

— Pat Kincaid, Worker's Vanguard,
newspaper of the left-Trotskyist Spartacist League

I'd like to speculate that possibly the film's deepest sympathy lies in
the revolt against the bourgeoisie, not as a political revolt, but as
a bohemian one. .. .Beatty had been obsessed with Reed's story for fif¬
teen years, and it can't be for the revolutionary politics. It has to
be for the nature of the man, Reed, the nature of that kind of roman¬
ticism, the nature of that notion of individuality, that spontaneity.

—Leonard Quart, Socialist Review

And even if the movie takes care to say that revolution would not work
in America, there has never been a major motion picture that makes a
communist so attractive.

--Thompson, California

...It's not clear from the narrative that anything has been .worthwhile ^
It is rather as though, if the revolution fails, all has, indeed, been
lost.

— E. Ann Kaplan, Socialist Review

...The plot turns into a winsome case of revolution-as-aphrodisiac as
Reed and Bryant, working as (what else but) comrades, discover they're
still sweet on each other. One scene is especially memorable: after
Reed makes a rousing speech to a hall full of burly workers, his audi¬
ence, as burly folk are wont to do, rush forward and overwhelm him with
hearty congratulations. Reed suddenly looks' up and favors Bryant with
the most pleasingly self-deprecating of shrugs. It's pure movie corn,
a page from a Harlequin'novel for intellectuals, but it is as irresist¬
ible to us as it is to her.

— Turan, California

REDS tries to demonstrate that Reed's romantic attachment to the revo¬
lution has distorted his sense of reality. The point is established
in a scene at a workers' rally. Tension is in the air. The revolu¬
tion is imminent. The debate over whether or not to seize power is
raging. Enthusiasm for the revolutionary moment is building up in the
crowd when Reed is suddenly propelled to the platform. The "American
comrade" is asked to speak. Reed responds with a passionate— but to a
contemporary audience, completely absurd--pronouncement that the work¬
ers in the U.S. are themselves chomping at the bit of revolution and
are ready to join their Russian brothers as soon as the signal is sent
from Petrograd. The crowd thunders its approval. By itself the inci¬
dent can be explained as an excess of the movement. But in the context
of the film— and ih view of all that follows— it subtly establishes
that Reed's political judgments are not to be trusted. After all,
love is blind, and we do not think less of the lover for this universal
weakness. To underscore the film's view that Reed's attachment to the
revolution is composed more of romance than perceptiveness, the inci¬
dent culminates in the sexual reunion of Reed and Bryant, likewise
tumultuously orchestrated by the Internationale.

— Silber, Line of March

...(Beatty] still found enough artistic detachment to make his Reed
into a flawed, fascinating enigma instead of a boring archetypal hero.
I liked this movie. I felt a real fondness for it. It is quite a
subject to spring on the capitalist Hollywood movie system, and maybe
only Beatty could have raised $35 million to make a movie about a man

.1 ■ W , ■ . V

■< . , ‘ . ■« V

SIGNIFYING ABSENCES

While any collection of excerpts may trivialize the arguments, as we
found reviews of REDS with distinctly different opinions and compared them,
we realized that although in some cases the reviewers' politics obviously
correlated with their interpretation, in fact the two did not always mesh.
Perhaps we could have more systematically found such correlations by compar¬
ing the publication's political line and its reviews (maybe starting with
the two largest left newspapers not dealt with here--the independent radical
Gwardfan and the social democrat In These Times). As we continued collect¬
ing reviews, we found distinct differences in what people picked up on in
the film, what they thought worked or didn't work, and what they thought
the film left out.

The movie never succeeds in convincing us that the feuds between the
American socialist parties were much more than personality conflicts
and ego-bruisings, so audiences can hardly be expected to care which
faction is "the" American party of the left.

--Ebert, Sun-Times

...The film deals with subject matter virtually unknown to the U.S.
public. The viewing audience is exposed to ideas about party-build¬
ing, Comintern strategy, the conflict between anarchism and Bolshev¬
ism, and the movement in the United States against World War I... Back
in the U.S., Reed becomes a full-time activist in the Socialist Party.
This is one of the most interesting parts of the film. The left-wing
of the party splits off,...

--M.V., Modem Times

For members of the audience not informed about the events, it must be
particularly difficult to comprehend the condensed and sometimes sim¬
plistic depiction of the split in the Socialist Party, and the two
communist parties that emerged from the split. This is so even though
the film stays quite close to what actually happened.

—Ring, The Militant

Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture
Limits, Frontiers, Boundaries

Teaching Institute
June 8-Julv 8 1983

Conference

July 8-Julv 1 2 1983

The Uhit for Criticism and
Interpretive Theory, in
conjunction with a
number of other campus
Units, invites faculty
members, graduate
students, and postdoctoral
students to spend five
weeks in an ambitious,
broadly international
reconsideration of Marxist
cultural theory All
' coyrses offered during the
Teaching Institute have
been approveci for full
Graduate credit Weekends
will be devoted to special
colioquia, including
Marxism and feminism,
and politics and cinema,
as well as* regular panels
on Marxism and pedagogy.
Inexpensive accommoda
tions will be available on
campus Local resources
include the fourth largest
university library in the
world For further infor¬
mation, including complete
course descriptions,
registration forms, and
information about possible
fellowships call
217 333 2S81 or write

Institute for Culture and Si
June 29- July 8 1983

Late and Postmodernist

with Trotsky against the U.S.S.R

New Jersey Comrade, Challenge

But the film is more than superficial— at the critical junctures it
makes the wrong political choices. Incredibly, we hardly see a single
capitalist during the whole movie, and the real horrors of capitalism
—the wars, the racist lynchings, the poverty, the cultural and moral
bankruptcy— are never vividly exposed. In contrast, the main villains
of REDS turn out to be the reds themselves.

Eric Michael son and Mark Rosenbaum, Unity

Paper of the U.S. League of Revolutionary Struggle (M-L)

One weakness of the film REDS is the near absence of the working class
except for a few brief scenes. Without them there is little under¬
standing of the essential motivation of Reed's life. Reed and Louise
Bryant did not go to Russia just because it was a "good story."

--Chuck Idelson and Michael Stephens, People's Wovld

...I would like to reflect what I think should be the obligation and
requirements of film reviewing, for a working class newspaper and an
unusually large working class conscious audience. Does its overall
reality, despite its weaknesses, provide a humanism in its presenta¬
tion, convey some semblance of the class struggle? Does the producer
serve the interests of peace and justice? It is necessary to see REDS
in the light of the artistic honesty of Warren Beatty and whether he
sincerely and truthfully produced a work of art. That this artistic
endeavor comes at a time. when nuclear war and anti-Soviet, anti¬
social ist, anti -Communist hysteria is being peddled by all the media,
lifts his work into the realm of art. Because it portrays the life
of a Communist, John Reed; uses real live Communists as "witnesses";
debunks 64 years of anti-Sovietism and captures the fervor of the most
exquisite moment of history;makes a hero out of a Communist, and does
this all with originality, imagery and beauty, this is art.

-»-Jerry Atinsky, People's World

The political arguments, though condensed, are powerful, as Beatty has
his hero answer the best arguments of his opponents.

— Kincaid, Worker's Vanguard

...Reed's role in U.S. communist politics reveals nothing so much as
the inconsequential squabbling characteristic of the left, its total
irrelevancy to U.S. life, and its complete dependence on Moscow.

— Silber, Line of March

The film showed Reed's group as the dominant left-wing group in the
Socialist Party. In fact it was a small minority within the left wing
of the SP. Had his group waited one more day and met with the major¬
ity left-wing memebrs of the SP at the founding convention of the CP,
no such split would have occurred. None of the facts clutter the
film. The Comintern is accurately shown directing both parties to
suspend any differences and merge.

— David E. Massette, People's World

During this we see him in a discussion with Emma Goldman, the anarch-
ist-to-the-end, a refugee, hating Moscow and the Revolution. Patient¬
ly (and beautifully played by '^eatty) he explains simply what she
cannot accept, about struggle and growth.

— Cole, People's World

Reed never told Goldman to stick with the failing revolution. "Other¬
wise what does your whole life mean?"--these words are taken, signifi¬
cantly, from the closing speech of the renegade Boshevik Nikolai
Bukarin, explaining at his 1938 trial his confession that he conspired

LOUISE BRYANT

After REDS it presumably will be impossible for leftists to dismiss Bry¬
ant as simply a nameless "girlfriend" (as Lee Baxandall did in a 1968 art¬
icle). But if Bryant gets inserted back into history by way of a movie,
this has raised a number of questions about the historical woman (Was her
writing inferior? Was she flaky, as Emma Goldman claimed?) as well as
about Diane Keaton's star image ("Annie Hall joins the revolution"), and
the character's narrative function as a woman who sacrifices herself for a
man.

...At the same time there is a constant "distracting" from the politi¬
cal issues through the focus on Louise. For instance, in the scene in
Louise's studio, shortly after she and Reed have met, Reed's political
ideas are garbled in order to rush us through to the question of whe¬
ther or not they will go to bed. I was really interested in what Reed
had to say, but obviously, from the way the scene was cut, one was not
meant to hear. The whole scene is geared toward the sexual relation¬
ship. Again, in the important scene where Reed and his group are try¬
ing to take their legitimate seats in the Socialist Party Convention,
the camera keeps cutting to Louise's emotional reactions, pulling us
constantly back to her personal feelings and away from the politics*.

The first time I saw REDS I was excited by the scene where, as Reed
quarrels with the leader of another leftist splinter group, there is
a recurrent close up of Louise Bryant looking shocked, and she soon
leaves the meeting. In the next scene she tells Reed how idiotic it
is for two small groups, neither of them representative of the Ameri¬
can working class, to fight in this way;"that Reed's best talents are
as a writer, not as an organizer, that he should stay home and write,
not go to Russia again to claim recognition for his group. Her argu¬
ment is compelling, and I was delighted to see the emphasis given her
by the film. I was puzzled when the film proceeded to set up Reed as
a hero in the face of all comers. Seeing REDS again, I realized how
much of a set-up it is. In the argument scene, Bryant/Keaton is
dressed in a housecoat. She's disheveled, almost hysterical, begging
Reed not to go, playing the role of possessive, irrational wife she
has played before. Read/Beatty is immaculate in suit and white shirt,
composed, determined, unwavering in his obsession.

— Martineau, Broadside

Louise Bryant didn't need Jack Reed to inform her of free sex. She
had been doing it, unabashedly in public, since she was a sophomore at
the University of Oregon.

—Laura Cottingham, Soho Sews,
the NYC hip newsweekly

There is something unpleasant about the characterization of a liberated
woman as, first of all, being sexually free. One may ask why, whenever
one talks about liberation in relation to men, it is immediately equat¬
ed with political or economic freedom whereas whenever the subject is
raised in connection with women, the expected reply is: "I'd like to
see you with your pants off, Mr. Reed."

— N.R., Modern Times

Some people have criticized the portrayal of Bryant because historical¬
ly she handled the whole issue of monogamy and sexual freedom with a
great deal more aplomb than is presented in the movie. I myself find
it very hard to identify with the idea of having multiple relation¬
ships and simply moving on from one to the next without any difficulty.
Many women would have difficulty in relation to that kind of character.

— Ellis, Socialist Review

...his wife Louise Bryant, a self-indulgent petite-bourgeoise who is con¬
stantly ridiculing Reed and trying to hold him back.... He is shown en¬
grossed in his personal troubles with his wife, reminiscing about the
past, while the streets are filled with red soldiers and workers, jubi¬
lantly defending the revolution.

UNIT FOR CRITICISM
AND INTERPRETIVE THEORY

University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign

Perry Andenon. Naw Left Review

Anglo-American Marxism and Historical Theory
History 490

Lawrence Grossbarg. IKinois
Marxist Theories of Popular Culture
Speech Communication 495

Peter Haidu. IHinois
Semiotics and Marxism
French 490

Stuart Hall. Open Um^rsity (EnglandJ
Cultural Studies
Communications 490

Fradric Jameeon. IMe

Modes of Production and the Spatial Text

English 361

Julia Leeage. Jump Cut

The Ideology of Domestic Space in Film

English 3^

Wolf-Dieter Narr. Free Unh^rsity IBerKn)

A. Balden Fields. Hfinoa

Developments in French end German Marxism

Political Science 392

Petroyit Zagreb (Mtgoslevie)

Richard Schacht. imnois
Marxist Philosophy
Philosophy 345

Geyatri Chakravorly Spivak. lexet
The Production of Colonial Discourse
A Marxist-Femimst Reading
English 481

Language and Representation

Modernity and Revolution

Power and Desire

Class and Marginality

Text. Structure, and Function

Power and Oppression

Culture and Social Institutions

Knowledge and Ideology

The f’olitical Ecorximy of Culture

Popular Culture and the Avant-Garde

Perry Anderson
Stanley Aronowitz
Jacques Attak
Etienne Bakbar
MichMe Barrett
John Berger
John Bradman
James Carey
Jean Franco
Simon Frith
Maurice Godeker
Stuart HaH
Dick Hebdige
Fradric Jameson
Emeeto Ladau
Henri Lafabvre
Juka Lesags
Cokn MacCabe
Fernando Reyes Matta
Amtand MatMart
Chantal Mouffe
Wolf-Dietar Narr
G^ Petrovi6
Michael Ryan

Gayatri Chakrayorty Spivak
Cornel West
Paul Wikis

•choel of HumanMaa
wfiwwxy wf imnois
at Urbane Champalgw
MS South WMfM Steaet
Urbana. MbtotoSIMI
USA

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graduate credit. Students
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of raadiogs bakara the aummar
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are invitad to audit ooureaa.
Contact the Unit for Criticiam
and Intarprativa Theory for
reading Hats and further
informirtion.

A Detroit Comrade, Challenge

Lawrence Groaabarg
Jefferson Hendrickt
Satya Mohanty
Cary Nelson
WMtam Ptatsr
pfenning committae

Cok^ of Commurtications
Cokega of Liberal Arts and Scianoas
EAKabonel Theory
Georgs A. Mikar Committsa
Humanitias Public Events Committae
Intsrnational Programs and Sarvioae
Jump Cut

Mew PoMicel Science
Reaaarch Board
School of Humanhiaa
Soci§f Ikjct

Woman's Rsaouroas and Sarvioat
and ak dapartmanti sponsoring couresa

It seems that in order to be independent, she has to be kind of querul¬
ous and she has to say the usual feminist thing, "You're not giving me
support for what I'm trying to do." But that plugs into something
that's around in American culture already. Similarly there's that
whole thing with the cooking where he's spilling things all over the
place; he's the kind of guy who's read "The Politics of Housework" and
is giving it a try, so to speak.

--Ellis, Soaialiat’Review

The University of Illinois Press
will be publishing a collection of essays
growing out of ^ Teaching Institute
and Conference ,

Beatty as Reed and Keaton as Bryant seem like spoiled adolescents play¬
ing with avant-garde radicalism rather than committed revolutionaries.
The sexual politics are also troubling. They speak of free love, but
the audience laughs at their naivite and doesn't believe they mean it.
With good reason: Beatty/Reed and Keaton/Bryant speak of non-monogamy
but fight over jealousies and lovers... not honestly trying to under¬
stand how they feel and why it is so difficult to be non-monogamous. . . .

"M. May, Modem Times

Each is the other's cross to bear, without which neither would want to
live. REDS suggests that the mystery of love resides in its inherent
masochism.

— O'Toole, MaaLean'a

[Lovers for awhile] in the late seventies, Diane Keaton and Beatty...
drifted apart during the making of REDS as Beatty lost sight of every¬
thing except the film (Reed and Bryant's marriage is constantly jeo¬
pardized by his passionate involvement with the radical cause).

— Thompson, California

Early in his sickness I asked him to promise me that he would rest
before going home since it only meant going to prison. I felt prison
would be too much for him. I remember he looked at me in a strange
way and said, "My dear little Honey, I would do anything I could for
you, but don't ask me to be a coward." I had not meant it so. I felt
so hurt that I burst into tears and said he could go and I would go
with him anywhere by the next train, to any death, or any suffering.

He smiled so happily then.

--Louise Bryant, letter to Max Eastman

The appellation "Red", long a term of abuse for anyone suspected of
harbouring critical views about the status quo, has a different sense
for me than its usual meaning of Left with a capital L, Ladies-make-
the-coffee-and-men-make-politics sort of slant. In the movie REDS,
there's a scene where producer-director-star Warren Beatty, .. .heads
for the toilet in a crowded jail cell filled with other activists and
more "common" out-laws. Beatty's face expresses pain and bewilderment;
an old geezer looks over his^ shoulder; we see a closeup of the toilet
bowl; then the old geezer says, "This one even pisses red." Laughter.
Meaning: in his tireless crusade for justice, John Reed is about to
lose a kidney. But he will persevere, in spite of government persecu¬
tion, dissension in the left, and desertion by his wife because of his
infidelity. I am reminded of a T-shirt I've coveted on other women.

It has a beautiful batik design of red on purple, and lettering which
says: "I am Woman; I can bleed for days and not die." When Louise
Bryant, Reed's colleague, lover, wife, is trekking through Finland on
skis trying to find Reed and get him out of prison (an episode almost
entirely fictionalized by the film and milked for its romantic inter¬
est), I wondered what she did when she got her period. The film
didn't enlighten me.

— Martineau, Broadside

THE WITNESSES

American Film identified all the interviewees, but after everyone had a
chance to guess.

For the best part of two years, he and his cinematographer, Vittorio
Storaro (1900 and APOCALYPSE NOW) collected the memories of other
veterans of the period--so many of them dead before the movie opened.
Thirty- two witnesses appear in the picture, but Beatty filmed many
more— some interviews as long as two hours. This material is a docu¬
mentary treasure that any archive would envy.

Thompson, California

.. ."witnesses". . .who were contemporaries of Reed and Bryant, reminisce
about them, often vaguely. .. .These old, wrinkled, "real" people are
like ghosts recalled from the past, speaking with authority about the
texture of their times, their voice-overs become a narrative device,
keeping the complex story lucid throughout. They can't tell us much
about Reed and Bryant, other than "they were a couple," so it is left
to Beatty to imaginatively create their private world.

—O'Toole, MacLean’s

But whether or not by design— nothing in this crafted, crafty film hap¬
pens by accident— the men and women speaking are never identified (and,
toward the end, become mere voice-overs). The result is deliberately
confusing, not to say obfuscatory, and it succeeds in putting some
good people in a very poor light. Hamilton Fish apparently spent a
lifetime fighting Reds without ever learning how to produce the word
"Communist," while the oldsters— who in their salad days and long
afterward were well worth listening to— come off as doddering and un¬
sure.

— Bel i berg, Barron's

...These witnesses. . .are so uniformly captivating that Beatty's deci¬
sion not to identify them while they are on screen is terribly frus¬
trating. Despite this their presence serves a double purpose: they
pique our interest by grounding the film in an engaging historical
reality, and, more cleverly, because their recollections are often
sketchy they point up the tenuousness and uncertainty of history, in
effect excusing Beatty in advance for the minor liberties he has taken
with the facts.

--Turan, California

They are narrators, and vocally in close-ups, as they remember the
times being shown visually, they comment. A fascinating technique to
facilitate the movement of time, and personal remembrances....

— Cole, People's World

...Beatty's shrewd and artistically brilliant use of a "chorus" of
aged real-life "witnesses" also acts to lend distance from the poli¬
tical present. The various speakers are contradictory. .. .The overall
effect is to fix the events in a distant, dimly if at all remembered
past.

— Kincaid, Worker's Vanguard

Beatty also uses the brilliant device of interrupting his story with
interviews with real "witnesses," still alive today. ...The effect, as
in a Brecht play, is to prevent the audience from getting too involved
in the film as fantasy--reminding them this is the story of real people.

—Michael son and Rosenbaum, Unity

figures who lived in the period, and knew the people; I thought it
was effective in countering some of the distortions in the film. We
realize that "truth" is hard to come by.

— Kaplan, Socialist Review

ZINOVIEV

Perhaps the most symptomatic element of the REDS reviews was the critics'
repeated return to the question: Who was Zinoviev?

In Moscow Reed comes into direct conflict with the leader of the Comin¬
tern, Zinoviev, a rigid authoritarian, who gives orders, and will not
brook interference. (Zinoviev was purged from the Party 15 years
later. )

— Cole, People's World

Are the major characters in the movie Bill Haywood, communists and
socialists? No. They are: .. .Grigory Zinoviev, a Bolshevik who op¬
posed the party's decision to begin armed insurrection (Lenin called
him a scab for that), who in 1925 organized the Trotskyist "New Oppo¬
sition" and was expelled from the party in 1934 (Zinoviev is played
by the well-known Polish anti -communist writer Jerzy Kozinski, a lover
of U.S. imperialism);....

—A Detroit Comrade, Challenge

It is with the figure of Zinoviev, sharply insisting on the party's
monopoly on truth, that Beatty does make some concessions to anti¬
communist stereotype. Yet as Reed's desire to return home by the
holidays is portrayed in the film, in the midst of the Russian Civil
War, we do not find Zinoviev's sharp and angry objections to this
powerful propagandist's taking off to be out of line.

— Kincaid, Worker's Vanguard

Zinoviev was a leading member of the Bolshevik Party and the Communist
International., In the 1930s he and many others were framed up by
Stalin and executed as "Nazi agents." In one scene, Zinoviev argues
with Reed, who wants to return home, assertedly because of a personal
commitment he made to Louise Bryant. Zinoviev argues, in a seemingly
heartless way, that Reed is urgently needed in Moscow for the import¬
ant political work he is doing. While the actor who plays Zinoviev
delivers the lines in a harsh, alienating way, what Zinoviev is por¬
trayed as telling Reed is not unreasonable. You can always return to
your personal responsibilities, Zinoviev says, but never to this
moment in history.

— Ring, The Militant

The characterization of Soviet Comnunist Zinoviev as a Marxist Darth
Vader, giving ominous speeches to John Reed about how he must choose
between his family and revolution, only serves to frighten the audi¬
ence. In fact, all successful revolutions have built on people's love
of their families and their willingness to make sacrifices precisely
to make a better world for their children.

—Michael son and Rosenbaum, Unity

My identification is always with the Reed character, of course, as
opposed to Zinoviev. Zinoviev and Radek seem to be relatively accu¬
rate portraits. They were ultimately killed by Stalin in an interest¬
ing historical twist; those great bureaucrats were ultimately murdered
as Trotskyist and Bukhari nite oppositions.

— Quart, Socialist Review

Zinoviev becomes the film's cynical example of a party leader: oppor¬
tunist, unfeeling, manipulating and dogmatic— the Hollywood-capitalist
image of a good communist. The historical fact is that Zinoviev was a
renegade: when he translated Reed's speech to the Oriental Congress,
he changed the original words "class war" to "jihad"— holy war. That
was the traitor's political idea, not the idea of the Third Interna¬
tional. Reed attacked Zinoviev for his treachery, though the film
portrayal of this is primarily individualistic— don't change anything
that I write— not political.

To say that it is a "distanciation" device would be to give it too
grand a name, but there's a way in which you are made aware that
you're watching a construction, because here are these historical

— A Detroit Comrade, Challenge

The whole Baku Conference is falsified. The racist portrayal of the
babel of voices is taken from The Lost Revolutionary by Richard
O'Connor and Dale Walker (O'Connor wrote the "Bat Masterson" TV series
of 20 years ago, which made a hero of a homicidal pimp), who got it in
turn from Robert Dunn, a U.S. government spy who never got nearer the
conference than Constantinople and didn't write until 1959. Zinoviev's
speech (which called for, among other things, a "holy war against rob¬
bers and oppressors") is cynically portrayed as a translation of
Reed's; in fact, Reed's own speech was about American workers' exploi¬
tation. Reed never told Zinoviev "Don't rewrite what I writel"; this
is put in to balance the similar scene at the beginning of the film
with Grant Hovey, editor of the bourgeois Metropolitan magazine.

—A New Jersey Comrade, Challenge

The scene is a racist slander, trying to build up pro-war hysteria
against Arabs and Iranians. .. .The movie. . .slanders Zinoviev. Zinoviev
and Reed actually put Toward the same line at the Congress: workers
and peasants in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East should reject alli¬
ances with the local bosses and should fight for socialist soviets on
the Russian model. This was a very advanced line, which the Communist
International later retreated from (at Lenin's insistence). I think
that in this case they were to the left of Lenin and they had a better
line.... We shouldn't be so quick to assume that the communist movement
in the past was infected by bad ideas like nationalism. The problem
was Beatty's lies, not Zinoviev's.

— A Reader, Challenge

REDS is accurate in pointing out the demagogic aspects of the Baku
Congress of Peoples of the East in 1920. Zinoviev did indeed call
for an Islamic "jihad" (holy war). This call for religious holy war
was an aberration of Communist International (Comintern) policy toward
the colonial regions. Surely Beatty was reflecting on Khomeini's Iran
as many reformist organizations hailed Khomeini's mullah "jihad" in
part on the authority of the Baku Congress. But Reed was right -

— Kincaid, Worker's Vanguard

There is even less basis in fact for the scene in which Reed angrily
assails Zinoviev for making a change in translation of Reed's speech
at the Baku conference. . .Actually Reed, along with numerous others of
the invited speakers, never got to make his speech at Baku. He did
give a very brief greeting, but his speech was simply included in the
official proceedings of the conference. Neither his greetings nor his
speech. . .include the phrase "class war" or "holy war."

— Ring, The Militant

When Reed discovers what has occurred, he engages Zinoviev in a shout¬
ing match— a replay actually of an earlier scene in which a bourgeois
editor has altered Reed's copy without permission. While Zinoviev
ridicules Reed's "individualism" and justifies the change on the
grounds of political expediency, Reed argues that dissent is the
essence of revolution. Taken as a unity— as indeed they must be—
the two scenes register REDS' essential message: revolution is the
struggle against authority in general and there is little distinction
Between the tyranny of capitalist wealth and the autocracy of commun¬
ist power. In fact, if anything, the latter is more absolute and,
therefore, more*oppressive. The communists are such cynical manipu¬
lators, in fact, that they will readily abandon their own well-known
atheism and play into religious sentiments in seeking immediate ad¬
vantages.

TABLOID

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Number 6

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$15 Institutions; $25, Angels.

It protects itself from going overboard politically; it finally ends
with a level of disenchantment with the revolution. It does ask ques¬
tions about political commitment yet it does not put down political
commitment, because Reed is an extremely attractive figure. It asks a
number of questions about the nature of political cormitment — the self¬
destructive quality, the level of betrayal which Goldman brings out,
that is the betrayal of one's ideals when revolution takes form— ques¬
tions to me that are real.

—Quart, Socialist Review

LEFT FILM ANALYSIS

Based on our sampling it seems accurate to say that most left film dis¬
cussion leaves a lot to be desired. By and large it falls into the familiar
pattern of claiming a single universal meaning for the film which the critic
has discovered through superior political and cinematic acumen. By virtue
of embracing Scientific Socialism, the critic has a pipeline to Truth. The
critic declares an interpretation and "proves" it through a variety of non-
analytical, rhetorical devices. For example, the reviewers introduce con¬
tradictory aspects of Warren Beatty's star image to butress whatever argu¬
ment is at hand: dissolute playboy or Hollywood left-liberal.

Such a strategy leaves little room for difference, for diverging views,
for contradiction. It tends to leave a lot of room for inflating the cri¬
tic's ego, for shooting from the hip, and for collapsing personal response
into political analysis: I liked it, therefore it's politically correct,
or vice versa. Such dogmatism from the reviewer tends to provoke an equal¬
ly dogmatic response from the readers (This reviewer is full of shiti) or
else humiliation (Gee, I didn't see that-, I guess I'm really stupid). An
alternative to slug-it-out dogmatism, Barbara Halpern Martineau's review,
asserts a feminist norm to interrogate the film's patriarchal form and
content. In the larger context of patriarchal film critical discourse, such
a strategy becomes sly, witty and subversive.

As editors we face the same problems in considering reviews for JUMP CUT.
Because the dominant forms of journalistic reviewing are built on assump¬
tions of imminent meaning and the critic as privileged perceiver, we often
find left film reviewers repeating the same pattern. Yet, we'd argue,
that's just not enough for an adequate Marxist analysis, for it misses an
essential prior question: What is the nature and effect of cinema as an
institution? As long as left film reviewers assume that it's more import¬
ant to have the correct line on Zinoviev than to understand how a film
functions in reproducing ideology, left cultural politics will be funda¬
mentally reactionary and mystifying— a mirror of the right wing's cultural
critiques.

A great piece of Communist propaganda, with a cast of thousands,
brought to your neighborhood screen by Paramount Pictures a "Gulf +
Western company."

— Blieberg, Barron's

The movie is directed primarily towards intellectuals and students who
would be attracted to revolution in this period of developing war and
fascism. The similarities of the present period and the time in which
Reed developed his communist consciousness are great and the ruling
class is out to create cynicism among this section of the population.

—A Detroit Comrade, Challenge

While few left film critics veered so far into conspiracy theories, most
saw REDS as propagating a simple message. It was rare to find anyone trying
to discuss the film's diverse appeal.

It has, as it were, something for everyone: A Revolution for the Left,
disillusionment for the Right, continued idealism for the romantic and
for the emotional, a love that spans continents and oceans.

— N.R., Modem Times

We think a review should be a site of investigation, a way to provoke
thought and educate readers about the world and culture around them. But
the left discussions of REDS showed virtually no interest in or awareness
of such basic questions as these: How did the general audience, unschooled
in left debates, relate to the film? How did REDS function as entertain¬
ment? How do the star images of Keaton and Beatty affect viewers' percep¬
tion of the film? What does the film convey about history and the nature
of personal and political change, and how does it use images to do so? How
does the film use its romanticism and dramataization of events and people?

The left seems to have little awareness of the contradictory forces at
work in a major Hollywood film— the influence of finance and the market,
the force of genre and narrative, the collective production process, and
divergent audience responses. Yet without more complete and sophisticated
analyses, critics can offer only fundamentally idiosyncratic and subjective
judgments. The left does not settle for that in essays on economics, the
state, and labor unions. How much longer will it accept subjective impres¬
sions as the basis for evaluating Hollywood? m

■'Ittrfnfi

JUMP CUT NO. 28

THE VERDICT

Guilty as charged

—Phyllis Deutsch

There's a lot wrong with THE VERDICT, the lat¬
est Paul Newman vehicle that (according to many
critics) assures him an academy award next
spring. The movie concerns a malpractice case:
two eminent physicians at the well -respected St.
Catherine's Hospital in Boston have apparently
incorrectly administered anaesthetic to a preg¬
nant woman whose brain died as a result— leaving
her a vegetable. St. Catherine's is a Catholic
hospital, and the archdiocese wants the incident
hushed up. The victim's sister applies to Frank
Galvin (Newman), a hard-drinking, ambulance¬
chasing attorney, to take the case. Galvin is
also an ex-liberal who lost his faith after
being jailed unfairly on a jury-tampering
charge. Frank the Faithless senses a shot at
redemption and decides, against the wishes of
his clients, to try the case in court rather
than accept a fat insurance payoff from the de¬
fendant.

Galvin is a fine zealot but a lousy lawyer.

His best witness is paid off by the defendants;
he forgets to tell his clients that he's decided
to take their case to court; he lies continually
in his single-minded quest for truth; he's inept
at jury selection; he alienates potential wit¬
nesses by screaming at them and disbelieves the
ones he manages to obtain. Abrasive and insen¬
sitive, Galvin treats everyone with contempt
except his good-guy sidekick, Mickey (Jack War¬
den). He's not a lawyer— or a man— anyone could
like, much less trust, but he's the holiday sea¬
son hero. What's going on?

Clearly, the white-knight-against-the-system
formula retains its mass appeal. But it's a
strain to keep the formula intact in this film
because the hero is, in turn, brash, self-serv¬
ing, and childish (Galvin is given to tantrums
when things don't go his way). To make their
myth work, director Sidney Lumet and scriptwrit¬
er David Mamet have a foolproof plan: they play
their dubious Christ off against a cast of char¬
acters considerably worse than he is. In a
world that stinks from top to bottom, Galvin
comes off smelling like a rose.

At the top, the ruling class fares miserably.
The doctors, lawyers, and priests couldn't be
sleazier. Milo O'Shea as a corrupt judge is
usually eating something drippy (fried eggs,
thick soup); James Mason as the defendant attor¬
ney Conccannon oozes condescension, never loses
his cool, and is served tea by a black man.

Both O'Shea and Mason have foreign accents; in
fact, all major players in the film have ac¬
cents. Except Newman, of course, who therefore .
comes across as the only real American in the
crowd. Indeed, it seems he is the only real man
in Boston: his upper-crust opposition is femin¬
ized by accent, appearance, and mannerism. This
is especially evident in the depiction of men of
the cloth: a couple of altar boys look like
fresh-faced young girls. But Galvin, gravel
voiced and abrupt, is a man for all seasons.

The film goes still further in its struggle to
keep the white knight on his charger. While
Galvin beats the upper class by dint of greater
virility, he gets the dispossessed— blacks,
working-class people, women— on the strength of
his own considerable credentials. He's white,
good looking, well educated, male. He's not

rich anymore but he sure used to be. This lit¬
tle twist signals the hypocrisy at the movie's
core. The film's attitude toward the people it
purports to help is a queasy mixture of contempt
and misapprehension. In THE VERDICT, the good
guys are just as awful as the bad guys.

There is one black person in the film: a doc¬
tor who has come to testify for Galvin. When
Conccannon hears that Galvin's only witness is a
black man, he snickers and tells assorted syco¬
phants to "get a black attorney to sit at our
table." But the side of right is just as wrong:
Mickey refers to the black man as a "witch doc¬
tor" because, it seems, he got his degree at a
women's college and works on staff there. Cal¬
vin concurs and sets out to find a more "cred¬
ible" witness. To make matters worse, the
script saddles the black doctor with an addi¬
tional liability: he has testified at twenty-
seven negligence trials. At best, then, the
black doctor is a well-meaning but dubious wit¬
ness; at worst, he's out to make a buck like
everyone else.

The working-class characters don't shine ei¬
ther, although the really fine acting in these
roles gives the film its few moments of authen¬
ticity. Kevin, the brother-in-law of the vic¬
tim, is being transferred to Arizona by his com¬
pany and hired Galvin simply to mediate the set¬
tlement payoff. When he learns that Galvin
turned down the money in favor of a trial, he's
furious. It's an interesting scene: Kevin's
rage, his punching Galvin, who, penitent, apolo¬
gizes for "not informing" Kevin of the change
and promises him he'll win the case. Kevin is
shot in close-up here and looks ominously large.
(In fact, Newman is frequently dwarfed by build¬
ings and characters . . . clearly, all the
world is out to get him!) Kevin's plaid lumber
jacket and heavy shoes are clumsy beside Gal¬
vin's well-tailored suit, and the working man's
rage is terrifying compared to Galvin's self-
control. Kevin becomes a materialistic brute,
incapable of understanding Galvin's quixotic
quest for justice. This despite the fact that
he and his wife have spent two years at the co¬
matose woman's bedside, shedding real tears,
waiting for her to awaken. The insurance payoff
was their only way out of an interminable night¬
mare.

Women also get theirs. Galvin has a girl¬
friend, Laura (Charlotte Rampling), whom he
picks up at a bar after delivering some profun¬
dities. ("The weak," he explains, "need some¬
body to protect them.") Laura says little,
broods a lot, and sleeps with Galvin. She is so
thin that she's a good advertisement for Ameri¬
ca's soaring anorexia rate. Late in the film we
learn that she is a spy for the other side.

When Galvin discovers her betrayal, he punches
her (hard) in the mouth. "Let him alone," she
says, obviously feeling she got what she de¬
served. In fact, she was going to confess to
Galvin before the KO and tries to talk to him
several times after that. But he has decided he
will never speak to her again. In the last shot
of Laura, she lies on her bed, awash in tears
and liquor, a phone receiver at her breast.
Galvin, on the receiving end of the call,
watches the ringing phone and looks very vindi¬
cated. Apparently, real men not only hit women
these days, they also don't accept apologies.

As Laura's decline suggests, when women aren't
tempting and betraying men, they are absolutely
helpless. Laura is not going to pull herself
together and punch Galvin back. In fact, semi-
comatose on the bed, she recalls Debra Ann Kay,
the negligence victim who will spend the rest of
her life curled up in a fetal position. Gal¬
vin's all Debra Ann had in the way of defense,
and this is what he said of her:

. . . that poor girl put her trust in the
hands of two men who took her life . . .
and the people who should care for her—
her doctors, you and me— have been bought
off to look the other way . . .

We are all each other's keepers, but the pater¬
nalistic blitz in thir line, and in the film,
keeps us all safely in our places. The "weak"
don't need the Galvins of this world to fight
for them; they can fight for themselves and
should be encouraged to do so, every minute of
every day. Fairy tales, even inconsistent ones
like this, are bad for everybody.

Says Mickey to Galvin of the other side, "How
do you think they wound up with all that money?
From doing good?" Meanwhile, Lumet and company
are laughing all the way to the bank. _

VICTOR/ VICTORIA

Poppins in drag”

It’s "Mary

—Mark Bernstein

Early in VICTOR/VICTORIA, the recently (and
widely) hailed "sophisticated" comedy, Robert
Preston, playing the part of a gay nightclub
entertainer in 1930s Paris, puts his stuffed
sinuses to bed with the languishing line,
"There's nothing more inconvenient than an old
queen with a head cold." The audience cracks
up.

As Toddy, Preston is the operative character
in the movie's plot; he takes in Victoria (Julie
Andrews), an unemployed singer, convincing her
that he can make her a star by passing her off
as a male female impersonator. This he does,
much to the distress of a visiting nightclub
operator (James Garner), who is attracted to the
singer until she reveals herself as a him, at
which point he recoils in panic.

The laugh mentioned above comes on the word
"queen." It's the laugh that second-rate black
comics got ten years ago with lines like, "no
man, not 'bad,' bad," or that second-rate white
comics got ten years before that by lacing their
language with drug references. It's a "knowing"

laugh, one that says, "Oh, we know what that
means. We're not square. We're cool."

But, as ever, there's more here than meets the
ear. In short, VICTOR/VICTORIA may be the
single most meretricious major American comedy
ever to receive such totally unmerited praise.

First, the minor problems.

The acting. Julie Andrews can't, never could,
and wanders through the movie projecting not so
much an intriguing androgyny as the continuing
impression of being 'Mary Poppins' in drag. Her
sexuality isn't ambivalent, it's nondescript.
James Garner, on the other hand, is one of those
actors (Dick van Dyke, Alan Alda) who has devel¬
oped an engaging television persona (Maverick/
Rockford/Polaroid), only to have it fall apart
when transferred to the big screen. For all his
shoulders, he simply isn't big enough for movie¬
making.

The plot. Garner, of course, redeems himself.
After establishing through the adolescent expe¬
dient of sneaking into Victoria's bathroom to
watch her undress (yes, folks, it's as sophis¬

ticated as all that) that Victoria is indeed a
she, he decides to woo him/her anyway. What a
liberal guy. Well, almost. He does tell Vic¬
toria it bothers him to be seen dating a "man."
She responds that she has to dress as a man in
order to work. Crap. Why doesn't it occur to
either of them that as Garner's character as the
biggest nightclub owner in Chicago, she can have
all the work she wants anytime they have the
common sense to leave Paris? Besides, Victoria
says, dressing as a man gives her a freedom
she's never before known. Crap II. That free¬
dom consists of having to pitch her voice down
in every conversation that takes place out of
her bedroom and of having to hide from half the
waiters in Paris (who saw her before she con¬
verted). The couple's real problem— i.e., that
he likes boxing wi-ile she prefers opera (or,
alternately, that they're both morons), is never
addressed; it simply gets dropped in the happy
ending.

The language. I doubt that 1930s Parisian
homosexuals referred to themselves or their
world as "gay," as in "Gay Paree," get it? (In¬
deed, that joke seems to be the only reason for
the Paris setting of the film, which projects an

atmosphere vaguely reminiscent of Scranton).

Nor is authenticity aided when the gangster
bodyguard speaks of his "anxiety attacks" or
when Jim and Julie make intense lovers' small
talk about what they can "relate to," exchanging
pious liberalisms on the subject of sex role
that sound like the most mendacious maunderings
of a Psychology Today writer's meandering mind.

If the movie did not go beyond this, it could
be written off as simply another cranked-out
Hollywood comedy, Blake Edwards variety; the
formula being, "Co-star two people so well known
that it doesn't matter they can't act, or that
the script is ludicrous or that the director
can't direct. Rake in the bucks. Repeat as
necessary".

The reason it can't be written off— and the
reason, face it, folks, that it was instead
hailed— is that it "deals" with homosexuality,
and it is here that the film's deep dishonesty
lies.

Every film attempts to establish a dynamic
with its audience, asks us to perceive charac¬
ters and situations in certain ways, even if
it's no more than to cheer for the good guys and
boo the bad guys. When a film fails to do this,
we say, with some disappointment, "I didn't get
into it."

The dynamic of VICTOR/VICTORIA revolves around
several deeply ingrained attitudes toward sexu¬
ality: briefly, the cultural messages that tell
men to divorce themselves from any aspect of
their psyche/self /character that might be termed
"feminine" and tell women to divorce themselves
from aspects that might be considered "mascu¬
line." Overachievers that they are, men gener¬
ally do a better job of this psychic castration.
Indeed, one can make a case that the dominant
value in the sexual consciousness of American
males is the fear of being perceived by other
men as having homosexual tendencies.

But rather than taking a liberated attitude
toward homosexuality, the film's dynamic invites
us to project our homophobia onto the charac¬
ters, laugh at them, evade our fears, and then
congratulate ourselves for our broadmindedness.

For example, the Garner character takes 'Victor'
dancing at a club where all the other couples
are male. He is discomforted, and we find it
hi lar ious--how can he be so 'uncool'? It's a
ridiculing kind of laughter, directed at the
kind of "man's man" who may even have made us
feel less than adequate. So in one moment, we
get revenge, evasion, and self-congratulation.

There was a time when, if a filmmaker was
"liberal" and needed a plot device that could
spout wisdom at appropriate intervals, the char¬
acter created may have been an old black man,
unlettered, arthritic, but "wise in the ways of
the world." Well, fashions change, even if
forms don't, and this season's officially desig¬
nated cute minority in Hollywood is homosexuals.

This is worse than patronizing. Because,
fifty years ago, what old black men or homosexu¬
al entertainers could have told us about was
survival, retaining in severely circumscribed
circumstances a certain trace of dignity. Sur¬
vival may be prerequisite to wisdom but is hard¬
ly its substitute. By giving such characters
"wisdom," however, we evade our own social
guilt. It's like: "Sure, guys, we dumped all
over you, but don't you see, you got wisdom in
consequence. Frankly, I think you ought to
thank us. I mean, where in hell would Jesus be
today if there hadn't been somebody around to
nail him up? You're not going to thank us?

Well picky, picky, picky."

Homophobia is a cultural value strongly
fringed with violence, and Blake Edwards is
clever enough to give that violence some vicari¬
ous outlet. Twice Julie Andrews punches out the
character who, as Toddy's original homosexual
lover, is established as the "bad guy" homosexu¬
al, our crimping stereotype. The audience
cheers. Late in the film, Victoria decides to
reveal herself as a woman to Garner's former
moll (a character drawn with utter contempt for
women); she drags the latter into a bedroom and
starts aggressively to undress. The latter
fears, not unnaturally given the way the scene
is played, that she's about to be raped. The
audience cracks up. In short, he's a "bad guy"
homosexual— punch him out, watch him cower!

She's a dumb stereotypic blond— rape her.

JUMP CUT NO. 28

VICTOR/VICTORIA is a truly nasty-minded movie,
dealing entirely with cardboard cutout charac¬
ters: the Wise Minority Group Member (Toddy),
the Plot Device (Victoria), the Hung-Up Stud,
the Closet Queen Bodyguard, and the Dumb Over¬
ripe Blond.

The only character with a trace of dignity is
Toddy, who comes across as a trouper. That dig¬
nity is destroyed in the film's final scene,
where he manfully fills in for Victoria in the
drag act. What we see is this big, hairy, fat
man, stumbling around the stage trying to look
female, only he can’t, he's laughing so hard (at
what?), and the nightclub audience, even though
it's the kind of performance that would turn
embarrassing once the initial shock value wore
off (why is this man doing this to himself?),
they're practically in tears they think it's so
funny, and Jim and Julie, well, they're seated
down front, sharing the amusement, looking so
heterosexual ly triumphant that I half expected
them to organize a cookout right in the middle
of the nightclub, then maybe duck out to a PTA
meeting.

The liberal line on GUESS WHO'S COMING TO
DINNER? was that, well, maybe it wasn't a very
good movie, but it was still a major break¬
through. It "dealt" with racism, and now we
would see blacks in serious film roles. To
which the only possible response is: name one.

Name one major American movie of the past five
years that featured a black actor or actress in
a serious role. Well, hey, fella, what do you
want; after a while we just got bored with them,
you know.

Yes, I do. Which is to say that mainstream
American comedies simply don't "deal"— they in¬
stead find brave new worlds to exploit and pre¬
viously ignored ideas to trivialize. The line
on VICTOR/VICTORIA is that it's a needed step
toward liberation. Sorry, sports fan. I'm not
buying. What's needed is not this truly mali¬
cious piece of celluloid. What's needed— now,
always and ever— is occasional honesty, un¬
feigned tenderness, and all but amazing grace.

E.T

The ultimate patriarch

—Phyllis Deutsch

Steven Spielberg's film E.T. is this year's
biggest money-maker. T-shirts and posters all
over the country celebrate the space creature,
and Neil Diamond has written a song using E.T.'s
memorable "phone home" as its theme. Reviews of
the movie are mostly positive, and reviewers
generally cite the film's make-believe ambiance
and happy ending as causes for its enormous suc¬
cess. In doing so, they— and most of the Ameri¬
can public— have overlooked the sexist backbone
of Spielberg's superficially engaging fairytale.

The film's sexism is explicit in the sexual
stereotyping of its characters. E.T. is male-
identified, even though the creature has no gen¬
itals. It is continuously referred to as "he."
The first link between E.T. and Elliot is a
baseball tossed back and forth: what better sym¬
bol of male bonding exists? Elliot, of course,
is a little boy, his brother is a big boy, and
all the children in the movie who have adven¬
tures (tinkering with telecommunications de¬
vices, fooling cops, riding flying bicycles) are
boys. Elliot's sister is spunky and bright {she

at least asks whether E.T. is a boy or girl),
but she dresses up the creature, brings him
flowers, and stays close to mama. Gerdie also
teaches E.T. to talk, but this deed (which makes
the rest of the film possible) is seen as far
less important that the physical machinations of
the boys.

Elliot's mother, another sexist creation, rep¬
resents Spielberg's traditional view of the nu¬
clear family as a sex-segregated enterprise.

Mary has moments of humor and animation, but she
most of spends most of her time hassling over
concerns of everyday life. She worries about
her job, her shopping, cleaning up, cooking, and
taking care of the kids. She's so intent on
arranging the groceries that she disregards
Gerdie' s attempts to introduce her to E.T., who
stands just a few feet away. Later, in a Hallo¬
ween costume, Mary is cute and sexy (she's
dressed as some kind of catlike animal) and as
giddy as ever. While photographing her three
children, she fails to realize that the one in
the middle has a funny voice and a flat head.
Like the buffoon in a comic opera, poor Mary
constantly misses the obvious.

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Obviously her husband's departure exacerbates
Mary's confusion. He has left the family and
taken his mistress to Mexico. But Spielberg so
steadily emphasizes Mary's inadequacy by carica¬
turing her as a frazzled housewife that the fa¬
ther seems to play a negligible role in the fa¬
milial disaster. Following the disappearance of
Elliot, a policemen grills Mary trying to find
out if anything has happened in the family that
might have caused her son to run away. Mary
tearfully replies that her husband has gone and
that "it hasn't been easy on the children."
Clearly, she's the one at fault: she's at home
and not doing a proper job raising the kids.
Meanwhile, daddy is home free in Latin America.
In the viewer's mind, daddy's departure is sub¬
liminal ly excusable: would you want to live with
such an unstable woman?

The children's complete idolization of their
missing father is another nail in Mary's coffin.
Mike and Elliot yearn for dad ("remember how he
used to take us to the ballgames?") but are not
angry with him. Surely children respond to a
parent's departure more complexly than this.

But when Mike and Gerdie tease Elliot about his
goblin stories, he pouts and says, "Daddy would
understand.” He implies that momny would not.

In fact, Mary does grab the kids and run like
hell when she first sees E.T. turning grey on
her bathroom floor. This act, which strikes me
as eminently sensible, immediately casts her
with the other "bad" adults in the film. When
she finally comes around at the end, there are
intimations that it has something to do with
that nice male scientist who watches over her
with great sympathy. Mary gets a man, but it's
unlikely she'll work any less hard, for in
Spielberg's universe men don't do dishes. In
this film particularly, they serve two tnytholog-
ical functions, both of which are embodied in
the characterization of E.T.

E.T. is first of all an orphan, completely
helpless being on an unknown planet. Left
alone, childlike E.T. will surely get into trou¬
ble (remember his drunken stumbling around the
house) or perhaps die. Casting E.T. as a little
(male) child in need of help enables the direc¬
tor to cast his audience as mothers . . . Eter¬
nal Mothers willing to give unconditional love
to a completely dependent creature. While ex¬
ternal mothers are generally women, Spielberg
continues his sexist motif by denying Mary that
role; instead, Elliot plays Eternal Mother to
E.T.'s Eternal Infant. And Elliot's treatment
of E.T. neatly damns the motherhood ir\yth by
revealing its destructive underside. Elliot is
extremely territorial and speaks of E.T. as his
special possession and pet. The boy expends a
great deal of love on the creature, but he also
controls him. Elliot's love— and Elliot's con¬
trol-make in unnecessary for E.T. to ever learn

JUMP CUT NO. 28

more than garbled English. Why grow up If mama
is always there? Spielberg shows the motherhood
myth— embodied in Elliot and E.T.'s relationship
as a symbiotic power game in which both parties
play impossible roles. Mother suffers eternally
from unrequited martyrdom and child suffers
eternally from stunted growth; Spielberg may
cart out the Eternal Mother to tug at our heart
strings, but he quickly dissects her and puts
her to rest.

shame is that there is much in these mythologies
worth preserving: the enqihasis on love, benevo¬
lence, and trust; the belief that wonder still
exists, as do miracles; the implication that
there are meeting grounds for strangers of all
kinds. Spielberg could be a true visionary but
is hampered by his passion for mythologies that
separate human beings according to sex and per¬
petuate unequal power (and hence, love) rela¬
tions among them. E.T. as characterized is a
"he" who will always be taken care of by some
loving mother because of his obvious vulnerabil¬
ity but who, at the same time, maintains the
whip of control by dint of greater wisdom.

Movies like this are not a balm in our impos¬
sible times; they simply make matters worse by
repeating the crimes that got us here in the
first place. We should all stop believing in
fairies until someone makes a film in which lit¬
tle girls have adventures on bicycles, too. m

and comes back to life. Is this King Arthur,
Christ, maybe even God Himself? Yes, says
Spielberg, and we all cry some more, blinded by
the power of a different myth, one that moves
from father to king to God with sweeping gran¬
deur and leaves a lot of troubled women in its
wake. In the film, as in life, the ambiguous
Eternal Mother cannot compete with the purity,
serenity, and wisdom of the Eternal Father, who
gracefully casts a spell and quietly resolves
all. Never mind that underneath is a whimpering
boy-child, incapable of growing up. Never mind
that underneath is Elliot's real father, who
skips town when the going gets rough.

Spielberg knows his stuff, no doubt about
that. Reviewers have praised the film's inven¬
tiveness and originality, but it's a hoax. The
movie moves so fast, the images are so dramatic,
and the sound track is so loud that we miss the
sexist fireworks on display. What's really a

But Spielberg gives the Eternal Father re¬
sounding applause. When E.T. is not a clinging
infant, making mothers of us all, he is the
flipside of the fantasy: the ultimate patriarch
who has come to mend the fractured family and
restore order in the kingdom. Although Spiel¬
berg portrays E.t. as a comic drunk in the first
part of the film, in the end he inspires rever¬
ence and awe. After all, he is a creature of
profound intelligence and wisdom. He even dies

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN

Male bonding and self abuse

"fighting machine," a fraternity of sorts. Also
the discipline shapes rather well-defined "indi¬
viduals" who are not only tenacious (in their
ability to survive and succeed) but also quite
willing to accept (paradoxically) that incred¬
ible sublimation of selfhood for the good of the
male group. In AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN, the
genre's theme “comnon good” seems paradoxically
to coincide perfectly with the phenomenon of
male stardom.

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN deals with the pro¬
cess of male bonding--machismo as self-abuse and
tenacity. As the hero graduates from officers'
training, he seemingly can corrupt society "on
the outside," as the result. This film is not
just another "armed services" picture; it is a
timely social discourse, which not only cele¬
brates an/the elite male group but* clearly iden¬
tifies the working-class woman as the enemy.

It all starts off with a dead mother (suicide
we find out— and not even the decency to provide
a note for her son) and a reluctant "adoption"
of the son by the estranged, seafaring husand/-
father (Robert Loggia). This aging sailor
"keeps" young Filipino women to clean, cook,
screw, and parade around the apartment half-
naked. The son, maybe twelve or so, is initi¬
ated into this sailor's world and his own flight
from feeling," a mythos identified by Christ¬
opher Lasch in the culture of narcissism which
is patently antifeminist. The son, Mayo, who
will be the film's hero, and the audience remem¬
ber these scenes throughout the film, especially
as they relate to the film's presence/interfer¬
ence/treatment of women. Mayo's "flight from
feeling is purged only at film's end. There it
happens through another, more significant male¬
bonding ritual --graduation from pimp's son to
future leader.

But beginning at the beginning— in the Philip¬
pines (done in yellow filter), Mayo, as a young
teen, refuses to go to a "shitty" boarding
school in the United States. He irrationally
decides to "stick it out" with his fat, abusive,
alcoholic father in "P.I." (the Philippine
Islands--in the film we hear much of armed
forces argot, language revealing the services'
reductive bent).

In P.I., we have the first street-fight scene,
with Mayo still a young teen (and not yet played
by Richard Gere), duped and beaten by martial-
arts expert Filipino youth gangs. Not only do
they thrash him and bloody his nose (which be¬
comes a signfiicant male-bonding experience, on
either side of the blow), they seem to impart
some of their mystical (judo) knowledge. In the
film judo will become a major male-bonding ele¬
ment in the officers' training school, and we
wait almost all film for the duel between Mayo
and his antagonistic superior, Foley. Such
fighting "knowledge"/ability separates "the men
from the boys," as in Mayo's street fight in
which he bloodies a young tough's nose and in
Foley's humiliation of the company patsy on the
judo mat during training. It is, then, seen as
positive not only that Mayo endured P.I. as a
boy but also that he got himself thrashed and
bloodied— and even better that he had that
"knowledge" imparted to him so early on in life.
His arrival at officers' training predicates
this clear-cut knowledge of a mystical male rite
(judo) and Mayo's presence of mind to carry it
with him as if it were hair on his gonads or on
his upper lip. In Mayo's moment of greatest
despair, he and Foley (finally) fight it out,
both exhibiting judo expertise. It is Mayo's
ability to externalize (through the mythos of
judo/combat)2 this social hurt that enables him
to find the "strength" to hang in there, despite
yet another (figurative and literal) kick in the
balls.

But this "positive male" social agenda con¬
tains much pent-up aggression. That aggression
is externalized in abusing booze (a fluctuating
signifier of machismo) and women. As in so many
"army" films, women here remain at the periphery
of concerns and action. (I was reminded often
in this movie of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, which
depicted the same, I think unwitting, alliance
between machismo and self-destruction). For
Mayo, booze is secodary, as if its abuse/use
were without real importance. But since his
father had whored around all his life (which
mysteriously "appears" on navy records Foley has
read) and his mother killed herself (for which
Mayo clearly blames himself), women become the
real object(s) of his scorn and blame and exter¬
nalized rage.

The film sets up this system of externalized
rage, etc.; the audience is clearly set up to at
least understand and most likely to sympathize/
identify with Mayo's formation before the en¬
trance of the two primary female characters—
Paula and Lynette— at the "camp social." Also
the audience had earlier heard Foley's apocry¬
phal warning regarding entrapment through preg¬
nancy— a possibility/theme which is presented to
the spectator as a ruthless and economically
motivated female weapon. These women are fur¬
ther denigrated because they work in a factory—
and when they change outfits in the car so that
they can garner invitations to the social, the
film suggests that a cerain degree of subterfuge
is already going on (in retrospect, there seems
little reason why this should be the case).

Still, the women "enter" this male-bonding nar¬
rative only after such elements introduce them.

In a way, their presence in the film seems im¬
portant only in terms of the men they screw and
how this "act" affects the stability of the male
group.

Their very existence threatens the male group.
That, more than entrapment, must have been what
Foley feared— he himself seems to have no "sex¬
ual identity" (like all good D.I.'s he has iden¬
tified himself only in terms of the male group).
But the rest of the unit has no such limitation,
and Foley's tacit permission for them to learn
the hard way leads to a series of real chal¬
lenges to the future officers' bonds.

Paula and Lynette are formally introduced to
Mayo and the Okie, Sid. This scene provides the
groundwork for the way in which the spectator is
instructed to treat the women for the rest of
the film. Lynette (the one "with the incredible
set of ta-tas") is the first choice, and she
goes with Sid, who isn't the viewer's number one
choice; clearly Sid isn't as leary of women as
Mayo (and we) are. Paula, who simply has small¬
er ta-tas, sort of goes with Mayo, after she
retreats behind her flashier blonde friend; her
identification with Mayo elevates her in the
film's overall character hierarchy.

Subsequently, their (Mayo's and Paula's) clev¬
er banter separates Paula and Lynette even fur-
thei — Lynette, from the start, consists as a
character of little more than body. But at the
same time, Paula's association with Mayo also
subordinates her--she's secondary to the male
star and probably too sincere to dupe him (after
all he's seen/been through so far). Such is not
the case with Lynette. This character shows a
real narrative impatience and an inclination
toward centrality in the social discourse at
hand— from the very start she surfaces as the
"townie working-class girl" capable of being
what Foley warned against. Mayo himself was
such an armed forces love-child (another reason
why he should know better), and a further, seri-

quest via identification'
like Gere.

•to be like Mayo/to be

Physical perfection follows upon the camarad¬
erie of the gym and the athletic field. The
material step of body building signifies adopt¬
ing the ideal of "team." As he proceeds through
officers' training, Mayo employs his physical
prowess as part of a kind of star presence in
terms of the unit and his mystical adversary
relationship with Foley, who, for all his super¬
ficial animosity, respects Mayo for the very
tools both men identify as prized possessions.
(Mayo had hustled his classmates with various
scams to make money.) That Mayo's corrupt ion3
(as a capitalist, which, I suppose, is anti¬
macho) irks Foley so seems to relate to the two
antagonists' equality on another level— Foley
would want to go into battle (which he predicts,
offhandedly, could happen in the next few years)
with a physical specimen like Mayo. This is
precisely why Mayo's lack of moral integriy and
honor irritates him so.

Foley's abuse of Mayo leads to a second rite
of passage. Again we see Mayo's will to endure
punishment as an integral part of how he identi'
fies himself, once and for all, as a man and as
a member of an elite male group. After Mayo is
caught breaking the honor code, Foley tries to
get Mayo to D.O.R. (quit) but "no dice." So
Foley forces Mayo to endure physical abuse but
to no avail. Finally Foley decides to reject
Mayo anyway, but the male bond is reactivated
when Mayo cries. What he shouts through these
tears simply identifies his need for the group-
that Mayo has nowhere else to go, that this is
his only chance to be better than his father.

Each of the many Foley-Mayo collisions, in
relation to the ethic proposed in AN OFFICER AND
A GENTLEMAN, reflects how the group gets formed,
how the individual male achieves positive self-
image only in terms of this "team." AN OFFICER
AND A GENTLEMAN is like the generic "artty pic¬
ture" (that it's the navy is not the point
here). In it we have the wop, the chicano, the
black (broke and married), the woman candidate
(wanting to be a man and eventually respected as
one), the losers, the Okie, and the bad-ass
drill sergeant (certainly arti\y pictures do lit¬
tle to veil the social significance of this
genre convention). And from this diverse group,
discipline and male-bonding rituals (fights,
uniforms, drinking, etc.) lead to a working

The film depicts endurance and tenacity as
male-positive traits in a cold world which seems
to demand these qualities of its men (though few
can answer this calling). Following this, the
film emphasizes physical fitness as yet another
positive male character trait. Such fitness
seems an integral part of Richard Gere's
(Mayo's) star image. As evidenced in his hang¬
ing upside down from the parallel bar in AMERI¬
CAN GIGOLO, Gere's fitness becomes part of his
signification as a male sex symbol. In this
film, that Mayo's tenacity carries over into
such a material concern (for body, muscles,
physique, etc.) suggests as well that the male
audience member is invited to embark on the same
relentless, physical-tangible, male-bonding

r - 1

JUMP CUT NO.

Finally, we should place this film in two oth¬
er eighties' genres. First, it's one of those
ratings-system hybrids: the "R" film which had
to be cut and recut to avoid an "X" rating.

Along with the remake of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS
RINGS TWICE, for example, viewers are pulled in
by trying to figure out what was cut and trying
to figure out how the film would look had these
scenes been left in. Of course, POSTMAN prints
complete with the excised footage are said to be
shown in private screening rooms all over Holly¬
wood— and I suppose the same will/can be said
regarding AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN. But nei¬
ther film is particularly risque, and the "re¬
lentless passion" promised in the advertising
hardly appears in either film. Misleading as it
is, the advertising signifies the studio's ina¬
bility to identify these films' "genre." By
mythologizing lost footage, the film gains the
allure not only of a "dirty R" film but also as
part of a new genre of Hollywood sexual vanguard
films which defy "the code" to such an extent
that a third party "had to" step in before the
film's release to the general public.

Also important here, and I've mentioned this
before, this film updates the "army" picture
genre. I've seen the film on several occasions
in economically depressed upstate New York.

There the myths of male bonding and armed ser¬
vice life appear viable and timely; they exalt
an alternative, positive, and attractive course
of action for the viewer. But in this very
"act" the film positions (again and again) male
versus female. Women structurally obstruct and
threaten the male group, its solidarity, and its
ways of transcending everyday mining town/mi 11
town existence. A dangerous social agenda is
served by this film. It depicts problems in our
culture while seeming to depict an alternative.

friend and former member of the fraternity. It
represents yet another cross Mayo must bear— and
as the audience is manipulated to sympathize
with Mayo here, it leads to his second denial of
Paula. He rejects her not only because she is a
townie factory worker "like Lynette" but also
because she is a woman and thus the enemy to the
group and to the stasis of a world in which he
has been "OK."

ous bond becomes established between him and
Paula when she reveals herself to be one as
well. But this male-female bond threatens "the
company" and Mayo's new identity in terms of
this group. The real tenderness established
with a woman serves as Mayo's excuse to coldly
drop Paula without so much as a note or a phone
call.

Again, as part of this macho ethos, Foley's
cold exterior serves to identify him as one with
"insight." Thus his prophecy regarding the
local girls comes to pass, with Sid as the "vic¬
tim." But the film does not let this challenge
the male group. Sid (identified as Mayo's best
friend— in that he knows that the star "is
good," mystically, early on) rejects parental/
societal pressure to be an officer and quits the
elite male company. But how can he deny the
tenacity and strength of the male bond (and de¬
cide to be a J C Penney floor manager rather
than a jet pilot). To go to Lynette is not the
romantic move it at first seems to be but rather
an identifier of Sid's faulty reasoning. He had
a romantic illusion of marrying Lynette and re¬
turning to Oklahoma (which turns him into the
Ralph Bellamy of this movie— no one would want
to marry him and move to Oklahoma). She quells
that offer by conveniently having her period and
rather coldly refusing Sid's ring. He is left
with an alternative prefigured by the categori¬
cal ethics of the film: suicide. Sid's death is
played out over a long duration, clearly a ritu¬
al of sorts, and is left on Lynette's hands— in
fact, she is blamed for it even before Mayo and
Paula discover Mayo's buddy hanging there in the
shower. This rather jarring scene is capped by
Mayo's embrace of and soliloguy over his dead

^Grafted somewhat artificially here from Peter
Wollen's assessment of Howard Hawks's oeuvre in
Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1972), p. 82.

On this level, AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN
hates women. The male bonding is shown as
"good" not only as part of the American way but
also as self-protection. The bonds of matri¬
mony, which threaten "the company," become an¬
other test to deny tenaciously--yet, in the end,
Mayo does go to the factory and sweep Paula off
her feet (literally). This ending isolates the
couple (from all the other loveless couples).
Mayo tenaciously overcame the effects of his
mother, his father, and his best friend and
could grow to see Paula in a different light
from women in general, especially women as rep¬
resented by Lynette. But how we read Paula's
"being saved" is highly problematic. She still
stands to gain a great deal economically/social¬
ly, and in a way social ascendence is Mayo's
gift to her. He gets it as part of the superior
position in the decision-making apparatus which
the navy grants him as he graduates from the
ordeals of officers' training. Paula's role is
to complete Mayo's rite of passage. These rites
let him have the right to acquire the most "at¬
tractive" female character. That woman then
serves to verify the very social position the
male group has provided him (and through associ¬
ation, her) with.

2Note that this external ization (mythologiza¬
tion) is primarily or uniquely male. See
Jerome S. Bruner, "Myth and Identity," in Myth
and Myth Making^ edited by Henry A. Murray
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pp. 276-87; and
Phyllis Chesler, "Patient and Patriarch: Women
in the Psychotherapeutic Relationship," in
Women in Sexist Society ^ edited by Vivian
Gornick and Barbara K. Moran (New York: Basic
Books, Inc., 1971), pp. 362-92.

3At first I found Mayo's "honors violation"
rather insignificnt and silly, but after check¬
ing into this with officer trainees I've been
led to understand that this type of behavior and
attitude is altogether serious (given the rules
3t officers' training "school"). Officer
trainee Richard Hegmann told me stories about
D.O.R's precipitated by "smiling" when leading
a platoon and lying about the number of pull-
ups a candidate performed. I

CHARIOTS OF FIRE

Traditional values/false history

Ed Carter

BRITAIN

This true story soars beyond sports to embrace some of the deepest
and most powerful drives in all human beings.^

In its promotion of essentially Victoran values and its resolute fo¬
cus on the past, CHARIOTS OF FIRE strikes me as the most reactionary
film I've seen in some time. 2

CHARIOTS OF FIRE opened in Britain in April 1981. Immediately the press
divided over its merits. David Robinson of the London Times said:

CHARIOTS OF FIRE is in most respects the kind of picture for which we
have been looking in British cinema, in vain, for many years. . . .

It is proudly and uncompromisingly British in theme and temperament,
with no debilitating concessions to chimeric notions of "internation¬
al" style. 7

Robinson makes no mention of anti-Semitism, instead concentrating on "unin¬
hibited Britishness." So begins the acceptance of CHARIOTS 's veneer.

Jo Imeson, in the bfi Monthly Film Bulletin, recognized the film's manip¬
ulations:

These two statements introduce us to the two sides of CHARIOTS OF FIRE.
First, the popular notion that it comes as a breath of fresh air to the
cinema: a film celebrating the lost values of sportsmanship, dedication to
ideals, personal inspiration, and. courage. Even before winning the Academy
Award for Best Picture, it was a critical and popular smash. By March
1982, it had grossed $6 million, twenty-two weeks after its American re¬
lease. 3 It received the First Annual American Critics Prize at Cannes, 4 was
voted most popular at the Toronto Film Festival, and received two standing
ovations at the New York Film Festival. 5 Most critics either called it a
masterpiece or at least praised the film's joyfulness and excitement. But
some reviewers saw CHARIOTS differently, as a poorly made, manipulative,
and reactionary work. In both Britain and the United States, critics for
mainstream and conservative journals and newspapers invariably approved of
the film, and liberal or left-wing reviewers condemned its chauvinism and
championing of aristocratic values.

If we analyze CHARIOTS beyond all the dramatic trappings, we can under¬
stand what the film actually has to say about athletics, British aristoc¬
racy, anti-Semitism, religion, and nationalism. "A true story," claim the
script, press material, and film, but nearly every incident or relationship
between the characters is a falsification of historical reality. But even
if one ignores the historical "inaccuracies," the film does not actually
proclaim the values that audiences believe it does. The two main charac¬
ters' supposed revolt against the establishment and CHARIOTS 's promotion of
sportsmanship and Olympic ideals are all but facades for the film's real
loves--competition, elitism, and aristocratic national and religious tradi¬
tions. The audience can both love and condemn reactionary values; they may
dislike the oppressive, class-ridden society of 1920 England and still rev¬
el in it, just as the film does. On many levels, CHARIOTS skillfully cre¬
ates this double pleasure for the viewer. As Stuart Bryon said in village
Voice, this is "a film whose subtext contradicts its text."® By covering
its multilayered, highly reactionary messages with an audience-satisfying
disguise, CHARIOTS has managed to become an innocent, critically acclaimed,
taken-for-granted hit.

Puttnam has already demonstrated his skill at . . . producing films
which strike a neglected chord in the public imagination. The chord
being plucked is the reassurance of traditional values at a time of
national crisis, the contorting sense that inner strength will win
through. 8

Puttnam could not have picked a better time to validate the British way.
With three million unemployed for the first time since the depression,
riots in the streets, and British power and prestige dwindling away, CHARI¬
OTS was just what the British needed to make them feel good about them¬
selves again. And with an arch-conservative prime minister and a royal
wedding over the summer, the atmosphere proved ripe for nationalism. Putt-
man proclaimed a revival of the moribund British film industry in his Acad¬
emy Award acceptance speech; he finished with, "The British are coming
back!'" Imeson also pointed out the duality of the film's approach.

This is a delicately worked through instance of having our cake and
eating it, too. These rebels against the system must . . . become
its finest adornments. ^

So from the outset, the lines of critical opinion were drawn, but Imeson' s
view was overshadowed as CHARIOTS began to travel around the world.

THE UNITED STATES

CHARIOTS was voted most popular at Toronto, played at Telluride, and be-

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Always wanted to know
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criticism?

Here’s your chance to find out.

Double Issue, No. 25-25

Special Se'ction on Lesbians and Film

"Introduction — Lesbian Film Criticism and Feminist Film Criticism"

— Edith Becker, Michelle Citron, Julia Lesage, B. Ruby Rich
"Filmography of Lesbian Works" — Andrea Weiss

"Lesbian Vampires" — Bonnie Zimmerman

"Lesbians in 'Nice' Hollywood Films" — Claudette Charbonneau and Lucy Miner
"The Films of Barbara Hammer" — Jacqueline Zita,

"WOMEN I LOVE and DOUBLE STRENGTH (Barbara Hammer, 1976 and 1978)

— Andrea Weiss

"The Films of Jan Oxenberg" — Michelle Citron

"Hollywood Transformed — Interviews with Lesbian Viewers" — Judy Whitaker
"CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (Jacques Rivette, 1974)

— Julia Lesage iiiMPrUT

"MAEDCHEN IN UNIFORM (Leontine Sagan, 1931) — B. Ruby Rich

Editorials on Gay Liberation and on the Male Editors' relation to Berkeley CA 94701

Lesbian Feminism

No. 16 — Special Section on Gay Men and Film
"Introduction" — Chuck Kleinhans
"Films by Gays for Gays" -- Thomas Waugh
"Homosexuality and Film Noir" — Richard Dyer
"Fassbinder's FOX AND HIS FRIENDS" — Bob Cant
"Foxed: A Reply to Cant" — Andrew Britton
"Bertolucci's Gay Images: Leqving the Dance" — Will Aitken
"Gays and Straights, Film and the Left: A Dialogue"

— Tom Waugh and Chuck Kleinhans
"Gay Liberation Editorial" — JUMP CUT staff

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JUMP CUT NO. 28

came the first British entry ever to open the New York Film Festival. It
won no awards at New York but gained instant notoriety through a massive
advertising campaign and word of mouth. As in England, the American press
split on their judgment of CHARIOTS. Typical of the new "minority" opinion
(almost the same number of reviews praised as damned the film, but the most
widespread and influential newspapers praised it, so that critical impres¬
sion became dominant) was Carrie Rickey's voice review.

In the film Abrahams undergoes an intense training that consumes all his
time; he does so out of a fierce personal drive. In the 1920s, however,
running was still considered a lower-class sport and athletics were not
taken as seriously as they are today. Two or three days' training a week
was considered excessive, and Harold barely did that much.

Abrahams was a chap who didn't take his training as seriously as the
group from beyond the Atlantic. He had his glass of ale when he wan¬
ted it, and smoked a cigar with evident enjoyment while fitting him¬
self for whatever competition he might find at Colombes (the Olympic
stadium at Paris. )15

You leave CHARIOTS hyped up and humming "Jerusalem," party to Eng¬
land's colonial willfulness. Little wonder it's the opening night
selection (in New York): CHARIOTS OF FIRE salutes the condescension
and noblesse oblige of the dress shirts in the audience. 10

At the opposite end of the political spectrum, John Simon not only
praised the film (with characteristic reluctance) but pointed out (unknow¬
ingly) its dangerously seductive nature.

[CHARIOTS shows] a vanished England that yet seems accessible to liv¬
ing memory, a graciousness that extends even to harbor masters and
sleeping car attendants, a sense of the social fabric without rips or
snags— except for a bit of religious intolerance and closed shop
snobbery which in retrospect seem almost anodyne. H

American conservatives and liberals alike were ready for such a film. For
ten years PBS's "Masterpiece Theatre" had been importing British series
that glorified the patrician classes, most recently (and most popularly,
perhaps second only to "Upstairs, Downstairs") "Brideshead Revisited,"
which incidently took place in the early twenties, just like CHARIOTS. De¬
spite its aristocratic pricetag of $100 a seat, "Nicholas Nickleby" still
won over New York in a coincidental run on Broadway. Even Gilbert and Sul¬
livan, Harold Abrahams's passion, had its smash revival on Broadway with
"Pirates of Ponzance." Americans have always felt culturally inferior to
the British but loved the culture all the same. And the general conserva¬
tive turn, with Thatcher's equivalent in the White House and the Moral Ma¬
jority on the loose, created a climate as ripe for CHARIOTS as the one in
the UK.

CHARIOTS is exactly what a lot of Americans want from an "art house"
film right now. Pleasant moments with pleasant people. No violence,
no sex, at least not the dangerous kind. No danger. No fear. 12

THE FILM

"A true story," says the film, but only the main story has any truth to it.
After discovering the extent to which so many details have been distorted,
one ends up wondering if any of the film is true. CHARIOTS 's opening and
closing scenes consist of a very Anglican mass for the funeral of Harold
Abrahams, whom we have known only as a Jew in the main body of the film.

In the confusion, one wonders if somehow Abrahams's celebrity status in
England was so great that he received complete acceptance in the establish¬
ment, and Anglicans hold mass for him— or perhaps the film is somehow anti-
Semitic by denying Abrahams his burial rights as a Jew. Historically, nei¬
ther is true: he converted to Catholicism in 1934 (ten years after the Par¬
is Olympics) and spent nearly all his adult life as a Christian. 13 Not
only does this clarify the funeral but questions his battle against anti-
Semitism. In fact, Abrahams was "hardly as concerned with anti-Semitism as
the film indicates."!^

And while it looks as if Abrahams is going to his first Games, he had gone
to Antwerp in 1920. In the 100-meter race in which the film has one of its
four climaxes, we see Abrahams's determination and confidence at its peak.
But in reality, Abrahams claimed, "I did not think I had any chance of a
gold medal, nor did anyone else. I really never gave it a thought."
Therefore, half of the film's story is a fabrication, done only to make
this man an admirable character and create a dramatic narrative that would
enthrall the audience. After all, who would identify with someone who
smoked and drank up until the hour of the big race and had no idea he would
win? And by extension, all the glory of Britain would receive the same

taint.

The details concerning Lord Lindsey demanded two alterations. First, we
see him and Abrahms run the "track" around Cambridge yard, and Harold
breaks the six-hundred-year-old record. The real Lord Lindsey (actually
Lord Burghley) ran the race alone, and he broke the record. He refused to
see the film because of this "revision. "17 And he did not place second in
the 110 hurdles at Paris, 18 which in CHARIOTS enables him to step out of
his place in the 400 meters to allow Liddel to participate.

As for Liddel, he did not need to be pressured into changing his mind
about not running in the 100-meter heats on Sunday, and then be graciously
offered a place in the 400. CHARIOTS gives us a heartbroken Liddel as he
boards the ship for France, just having learned that the 100-meter heats
are to be run on a Sunday. The Olympic schedules actually came out far in
advance of the team's departure for France, so he already knew; he merely
decided to enter the 400 meters instead, and no such meeting with the
Prince of Wales took place. 19 And Jennie Liddel did not staunchly opposfiQ
her brother's running, as in the film, but wholeheartedly supported him.*^
Apparently she did not find this change offensive and deigned to see the
film.

CHARIOT'S Paris Olympics certainly seems rather calm compared to the ca¬
lamity that actually took place. International tensions created a disas¬
trous competition, and foreign teams were booed by French fans. In the
film, a little booing seems to be directed toward the British, and the
Americans are well respected; the reverse actually happened. 21 But it only
adds to Abrahams's and Liddel' s underdog status.

In "revising" history, Puttnam, Welland, and Hudson have created a mythi¬
cal rather than historical film. None of the characters seems truly real¬
istic— more an idealization or archetype. The care with detail and atmos¬
phere simultaneously lends historical authenticity and, since this time is
really light years away from our own, gives CHARIOTS a legendary feel.

The most significant change in CHARIOTS is the depiction of anti-Semi¬
tism. Abrahams feels he must defeat the forces of prejudice that he senses

closing in around him. Although we see no actual discrimination and only a
modicum of verbal disparagement, Abrahams's speeches make us believe that
19205 Britain was rife with anti-Semitism. Although even the most tolerant
society has individuals who do express their prejudice, in no way was Eng¬
land the place that Abrahams describes. With its society based on democ¬
racy, "English national culture absorbed foreign elements without suffering
from an identity crisis. "22 in 1917, Parliament issued the Balfour Declar¬
ation, which stated that the British government would work toward estab¬
lishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. 23 Although anti-Semitism rose af¬
ter the Russian Revolution, its "manifestation . . . ceased during the ear¬
ly '20's."24 Even a small outburst during this time was "not considered
serious enough to require new strategy for the defense of Jewish rights. "25
And anti-Semitism always "had little ostentatious elitist support. "26 in
short.

The 1920's were a relatively quiet period for Anglo-Jewry, marked
mainly by the shifting population from the older centers, and the
spreading of Jews into a wider variety of occupations. 27

Both of Abrahams's brothers preceded him at Cambridge, and Dr. {later
Sir) Adolphe Abrahams was Master of Operations for the 1912 British Olympic
team. 28 So although the few remarks made by the Cambridge dons and others
about Abrahams's heritage could occur in any country at any time, they rep¬
resent what Harold believes to be a widespread phenomenon. Any time a film
distorts history this way, even if it does not claim to be a true story
(but especially if it does), dangerous precedents are set. CHARIOTS OF
FIRE is not a documentary and does not have to treat its material as such,
and its distortions of history will hardly cause riots in the streets. But
its reactionary depiction of the beauty of colonial Britain's elite gets
quite a lot of its support from the film's assurance of truthfulness, ‘thus
giving it authenticity and so more power.

Although CHARIOTS overstates its depiction of British anti-Semitism, it
still manages to totally understate the significance of anti-Semitism as a
malignant social phenomenon. If we assume for the moment that CHARIOTS
shows the state of anti-Semitism accurately (as the audience must), then it
gives the hazardously false picture that anti-Semitism does not really
amount to much and that one can overcome it relatively easy.

The movie instructs us that any barriers of class (race) prejudice
and pounds of sterling silver will crumble like paper mache if you
only have the gumption to follow your inner voices and remain true to
yourself .29

Abrahams' great wealth ensures him a privileged position in English
society. There is no suggestion that he has had to struggle against
prejudice to gain admission to Cambridge, or that he is in any way
snubbed by his peers. Nor does his status as a Jew seem to interfere
with his selection for the British Olympic team. In fact, the only
anti-Semitism we witness is the wry condescension of a couple of ag¬
ing dons. 30

We see no barriers to admission to the school, to clubs, or to athletics.

No one says anything to Abrahams's face. The only truly vicious line comes
from a wounded war veteran who helps Abrahams and Montague with their bags
at the train station. After the two students have gone off in their taxi,
he says, "That's why we fought this war, Harry, so Jew-boys like that can
get a decent education. "31 Welland significantly puts the worst anti-Semi¬
tism onto a disabled working-class veteran while the upper-class slurs are
more secretive and genteel. This seclusion of anti-Semitism has the unin¬
tentional (?) effect of making Abrams seem the arrogant, defensive snob
that the dons say he is. Many reviewers got this impression:

(He is] an English Jew with a chip on his shoulder. 32

Harold is a fanatic. 33

[Abrahains] is slightly paranoid. 34

Abrahams is arrogant and defensive. 35

If these reviewers thought this of Abrahams, the audience must have fol¬
lowed suit. With the stereotype already having a long history (as evi¬
denced by Gielgud's "as they invariably are" [defensive]), we need no more
portrayals of Jews imagining discrimination. When real Jews then complain
about real prejudice, non-Jews begin to wonder.

CHARIOTS also makes Jewishness funny. Though audiences disapprove of the
dons' patronizing attitude, Gielgud and Lindsay Anderson make them so over¬
ly pompous and silly that people chuckle at their ugly lines. When Abra¬
hams first meets Sybil over dinner, he says he will have "the same" when
Sybil orders "the regular." However, Sybil had no idea of Harold's Jewish¬
ness when ordering. By the time dinner comes, he has devulged his heri- '
tage, so the arrival of pigs' knuckles gets a big laugh, from the couple
and from the audience. Abrahams is determined to fight the prejudice he
has encountered but still finds it within himself to be amused by his cul¬
tural "peculiarities." CHARIOTS gives us the most innocuous vision of ra¬
cial and religous intolerance. Filmic representations of bigotry should
unnerve us and make us want to eliminate it. We see no reason to think
that anti-Semitism does any real harm, that Jews can take it all in stride
if necessary and, if they want to, can overcome it by proving themselves
better than non- Jews.

Finally, Abrahams is really more English than Jewish, more accepted and

JUMP CUT NO. 28

successful than many of his peers. A nondiegetic rendition of "He Is an
Englishman" accompanies the end of his speech complaining about the halls
of Cambridge being closed to Jews, and when the scene cuts to the play in
which the song is being sung, none other than Abrahams leads the singing.

CHARIOTS fools the audience by making it think that it celebrates virtues
that do not seem to exist anymore. In actuality, these virtues never ex¬
isted the way CHARIOTS proclaims. Celebration of sportsmanship and the
"Olympic ideal" appear most often in reviews (and in people's minds, no
doubt) as the foremost meanings of the film. Liddel and Abrahams do not
run for money or glory or national pride, so they think, but for "the
sport" and for reasons they value above sport. Upon closer look, though,
we see that they actually perform as fanatically as any modern athlete; "It
is clear that for both, winning matters much more than how they play the
game. "36 In a Scotland-versus-France track meet, one of the French (!)
runners trips Liddel, but Liddel thrills the crowd (in the stadium and the
theater) with a miraculous come-from-behind victory that leaves him visibly
exhausted.

This winning-at-all -costs attitude in no way resembles that of modern
athletes, who value their bodies enough not to destroy them for victory.

When Abrahams loses his only race with Liddel, he falls into a melancholic
state and nearly decides to quit running; he had never lost before, and the
pain of losing proves too much for his ego. Although modern athletes re¬
ceive salaries that nearly everyone thinks excessive, runners and Olympic
athletes are technically amateur and still risk expulsion for accepting
under-the-table money. But in the 1920s only those who could afford it
competed. A kid from Harlem or the East End could never have become an
Olympic athlete in 1924.

CHARIOTS is a reactionary enterprise stirring up the audience's
basest, most knee-jerk nationalism (the Olympic processional re¬
duced me to rooting for the Yanks . . . and brought Riefenstahl 's
OLYMPIA too close for comfort). 37

In so many ways, Puttnam, Welland, and Hudson manage to make us believe
that they attack the very things the film glorifies. On the surface, Lid¬
del and Abrahams revolt against the establishment, but they exemplify its
traditions and values above anyone in the film. In fact, Liddel is too
conservative even for the aristocracy; he believes in God above country, a
much more archaic allegiance. And however much Abrahams complains, he
still loves Gilbert and Sullivan and desires more than anything to become
part of the system he supposedly despises. The film also embraces the ar¬
istocracy it purports to criticize. With voyeuristic camera movements and
point-of-view editing, we feel as if we live in the 1920s London. Every
scene is lushly decorated, from the (Academy Award-winning) costumes to the
ubiquitous champagne. An outrageous pan/track through the Cambridge club
recruitment event nearly has us drooling on the surroundings, and if we do
not already feel we are there, we wish we were. The low, golden lighting
on all interior scenes bathes the characters and appointments in a rich
glow. When Lord Lindsey sets up a series of hurdles, each with a full
champagne glass on it, the audience gasps when he spills a drop or two.

And genteel, proper servants of every description serve the main players,
including porters, waiters, chauffers, and butlers. And each one complete¬
ly humbles himself to those he serves.

In every way CHARIOTS allows the audience to have it both ways: they can
guiltlessly adore the reactionary ways of colonial Britain, yet still feel
morally superior to its excesses. Andrew Sarris noted this phenomenon in
the scene in which the Olympic committee tries to get Liddel to change his
mind. This scene has the most "frogs" per minute of any in the film.

The audience gets a double dose of amusement, first by sharing his
(Olympic commissioner) francophobic nastiness, and then by watching
him get his while it (the audience) escapes unscathed. 38

The audience can participate in anti-French, pro-upper class, anti-Semitic,
and even anti-American attitudes and still not feel shameful about it be¬
cause the filmmakers expiate any possible guilt by momentarily punishing
each of these prejudices. CHARIOTS thus provides lots of remorseless ani¬
mosity.

The final, subtlest, and most effective reactionary idea that CHARIOTS
peddles is fundamentalist religion.

The problem is that Charleson portrays the character so appealingly
that one can easily fail to see in this fundamentalist preacher/mis¬
sionary a 1920's precursor of the Moral Majoritarian. We all tend to
admire people of principle, but I suspect there is more than a little
conservative calculation in the promotion of such a hero for contem¬
porary audiences. 39

Liddel believes that God comes before all else and reads the Bible literal¬
ly. Although sober and quiet about his faith, he still enforces his be¬
liefs onto others, and in a hypocritical way. On the way home from church
Eric's friend complains that the kingom of God is not a democracy but run
by a tyrant; Liddel replies that no one forces you to be believe in God,
but he immediately does the opposite. He stops a young boy playing foot¬
ball and calmly but firmly tells him he should have been in church and that
he must be there next Sunday.

Most of the time, however, Liddel keeps his devotion private, and we ad¬
mire him for it. His sermons, both public (to miners who have come to see
him race) and clerical (on the day of the 100-meter heats), do not contain
any fire and brimstone. His personality and attitude make for a very
pleasant, sympathetic symbol of ardent religosity that audiences can be¬
lieve in. Liddel' s faith goes further even than modern so-called Moral
Majoritarians; it is one of the heinous aspects of British imperialisms:
the proselytizing of nonwhites in the colonies. And Liddel 's mission is
extracolonial: China. Jerry Falwells' plan does not include spreading the
gospel to the Third World. Sarris went so far as to compare Liddel to an¬
other modern religious fundamentalist:

My first thought was. Ayatollah, anyone? Do we really need any more
people in this world who do not want to do anything interesting on
the Sabbath?40

So even though Liddel is far more conservative even than the aristocrats of
his day, we admire him for his devotion to principle and his charming
smile. ,

CHARIOTS OF FIRE has already become a piece of American culture, to be
quoted from as a modern classic. A current Budweiser commercial imitates
the now-famous beach running sequence, complete with horse (instead of men)
splashing in the surf and mock-Vangelis synthesized music. The commercial
makers knew that CHARIOTS has become so popular and so acceptable that pi¬
rating from it would be a sure-fire advertising gimmick. Even now, many
people consider this film a truly inspirational masterpiece or at least a
harmlessly entertaining piece of fluff. In the future, the voices of the
few insightful reviewers and a fraction of the public who saw the film's
true meaning will be forgotten, and they have already begun to shrink under
the weight of the film's popular and critical successes. Like Abrahams and
Liddel, CHARIOTS OF FIRE will become a legend, and the reactionary elements
will be even harder to point out.

Ijack Kroll, "Ten seconds to Eternity," ifeiraweek, 28 September 1981,
p. 69.

JUMP CUT NO. 28

^Michael H. Seitz, "Thatcher in the Theatre," progressives, December 1981,
p. 54.

^Variety, 3 March 1982, p. 9.

^Rolling Stone, 1 October 1981, p. 72.

^Greg Kilday, los Angeles Herald Examiner, 6 October 1981, p. 93.

^Stuart Byron, village voice, 21 October 1981, p. 50.

^David Robinson, London Times, 3 April 1981.

8jo Imeson, bfi Monthly Film Bulletin, May 1981, p. 90.

^Imeson, p. 90.

lOCarrie Rickey, "A Raging, Seething, Europhiliac, Socially Conscious,
Carefully Orchestrated, Two-Headed Babe," village voice, 23 September
1981, p. 43.

lljohn Simon, national Review, 13 November 1981, p. 1360.
l^stephen Schiff, Boston Phoenix, 20 October 1981, p. 4.
l^Murray Frymer, san Jose Mercury, 30 October 1981, p. 45.

^^Peopie, 19 December 1981, p. 94.

ISjohn Kieran, The story of the Olympic Games (New York: J. J. Lippencott,
1936), p. 151.

16Melvyn Watman, a History of British Athletics (London: Robert Hale,

1968), p. 28.

^ ^People , p . 94 .

^^oiympic Games Handbook (Toronto: Pangurian Press, 1975), p. 53.

ISPress material, courtesy Museum of Modern Art Film Study Center.

20ibid.

^^Literacy Digest, 2 August 1924, p. 49.

22Gisela L. Lebzelter, Political Anti-Semitism in England, 1918-1939 (New

York: Holmes and Meier, 1978), p. 175.

23v. D. Vipman, Social History of the jews in England, 1850-1950 (London:
Watts and Co., 1954), p. 306.

^^Lebzelter, p. 29.

25lbid., p. 139.

26lbid., p. 173.

27vipnian, p. 310.

28Alan Brien, London Times, 5 April 1981, p. 42-C.

29stephen Harvey, "Grown-Up Hour," inquiry, October 1981, p. 36.

30sertz, p. 55.

3lAfter the viewing, I still thought he was just saying "blokes [not Jew-
boys] like that." Only when I read the script did I know his real words.
Certainly the causual listener, on first viewing, cannot hear the differ¬
ence. But even this line is reactionary. This veteran says, without the
least irony in his voice, that his sacrifices have all been made to help
put an upper-class man through Cambridge. Abrahams was called up too
late to do any fighting, so he is doubly privileged.

^^Variety, 2 April 1981, p. 18.

33simon, p. 1360.

3^David Brudnoy, Boston Herald American, 23 October 1981, p. Bl.

35constance Gorfinkle, Boston Patriot-Ledger , 23 October 1981, p. 19.

36Seth Cagin, Soho weekly News, 29 September 1981, p. 41.

37Rickey, p. 43.

38Andrew Sarris, "Chariots of Mixed Feelings," village voice, 7 October
1981, p. 51.

39seitz, p. 54.

40sarris, p. 52. ■

BIRGITT HAAS MUST BE KILLED

State terrorism

—Hal W. Peat

IL FAUT TUER BIRGITT HAAS (BIRGITT HAAS MUST BE
KILLED) is a dark, unflinchingly hard look at
one of the most troubling phenomena of the in¬
ternational political scene: the growing use by
many governments, whether "democratic" or "au¬
thoritarian," of sophisticated, illicit, and
frequently violent counterterrorist methods.
Director Laurent Heynemann distinguishes his
film from the usual tales of the print and visu¬
al media by a highly personalized examination of
the characters and motivations of the people in
one rather minor affair, the kind which inevit¬
ably appears as another distorted and sensation¬
alized story in the newspapers or on television.
In this sense, Heynemann's effort here gives us
a prelude, a revelation of faces, facts, contra¬
dictions, and events leading up to the headlines
and cliches which insidiously bury the truth.

The film's premise is simple. Various Europe¬
an intelligence and counterterrorist organiza¬
tions have decided it is time to "eliminate" and
"close the case on" one German revolutionary,
Birgitt Haas. But Haas has been inactive and in
hiding for some time; in fact,- the authorities
have simply continued to use her name and iden¬
tity in their versions of recent confrontations
with underground groups. Having built her "ter¬
rorist" stature to monstrous proportions by
blaming her for masterminding these incidents,
they are now ready to score a major "victory"
for law and order by having her killed. This
operation is left to the planning of Athanase
(Philippe Noiret), head of a clandestine French
antiterrorist unit. Athanase's strategy is to
use an innocent and unwitting citizen, Charles
Bauman (Jean Rochefort), a man otherwise totally
unconnected with the matter, as a pawn to lure
Haas into a situation where she will become the
apparent victim of a "crime of passion." A
double of Bauman will actually kill her and be
observed leaving the scene; then Bauman, and not
the authorities, will be accused of the deed.
Bauman, after all, is separated from his wife
and adrift in his life while Haas, in the male
viewpoint of Athanase's group, is a woman whose
liberated sexuality can only be understood as a
promiscuous sensuality they can easily exploit
in order to eliminate her.

Much like Claude Chabrol's NADA, in which the
state does not hesitate to sacrifice one of its
own members when expedient to do so and in which
the mythic dimensions of the terrorist must be
upheld and enhanced to justify the state's own
illegal violence, the mechanics of counterter¬
rorism in BIRGITT HAAS are shown to be used with
even more tert ifying expertise by the employees
of the state than by their revolutionary oppo¬
nents. As in Chabrol's film, we ultimately find
that the tactics of terrpr become their own trap
for whomever employs them, for whatever reason.

Thus it is that, in several starkly ironic
scenes, Birgitt listens in amazed disbelief to

radio reports of terrorist operations attributed
to her leadership. It is as though, having once
assumed the public identity of "terrorist" by
using revolutonary violence, the identity has
gone on to grow an existence of its own. At the
opening of the film, she faces the unreality of
a self which has been cleverly taken over and
fostered by the state for its own ends. Basic¬
ally an intellectual and until now a quick-wit¬
ted survivor, she understands, at this point,
the necessity of no longer surviving— of surren¬
dering or dying in order to silence the weapon
her foes have created.

While they are practiced manipulators of
events, Athanase and his seoond-in-command,
Richard Colonna (Bernard LeCoq) discover their
cleverness cannot always control events. Things
begin to run awry when Colonna himself, charac¬

terized by his superior as "cold, mean, and am¬
bitious," receives conmand of the mission to
kill Haas. Athanase soon learns that Colonna
has made the fatal error of mixing personal and
professional convenience; the lover of Bauman's
estranged wife, he uses the Haas assignment to
frame the man. But Athanase cannot change
pawns: Bauman is already on his way to Germany
for the job the unemployment department has just
"found" for him. Athanase allows the plan to
proceed to the point of the chance meeting be¬
tween Birgitt and Bauman. On the surface,
events now seem to go according to plan, but
another miscalculation contributes to the fail¬
ure of the scheme. Birgitt Haas feels genuine
emotion for Bauman; she is not the uncontrolled
nymphomaniac her enemies have assumed her to be.
Haas kills Colonna after Bauman interrupts his
double about to kill Haas in her hotel room.

But Colonna's death also proves convenient for
Athanase and the authorities: it rectifies his
initial mistake. Athanase, the more “humane"
yet sinister member of the state apparatus, re¬
mains to tie up the loose ends.

Athanase is an interesting study of a kind of
shadow-world version of the corporate man. As
portrayed by Philippe Noiret, so often the amia¬
ble, agreeable man of the French cinema, the
character of Athanase has a resonance we might
not expect in a man whose career is built on the
literal destruction of whomever the state de¬
crees. Noiret projects something between the
world weariness of a Graham Greene exile and the
hopeless obedience of a Kafka civil servant.
"Shoulo I get out now?" he wonders aloud to his
wife one night in bed. "After this job," she
replies, unperturbed. Of course, it will always
go on being after the next "job." Heynemann
never permits us to become so caught up in this
complexity of characterization, however, that we
lose critical insight into the meaning of Atha¬
nase' s actions. Athanase fully represents a
bourgeois political culture able to comfortably
(for the most part) rationalize its resort to
illicit activities against not only its declared
enemies but also its own citizenry.

In a wider sense, Heynemann reveals the decep¬
tiveness and danger of roles and role playing--
whether intentional, unconscious, or unwilling-
in a politically bankrupt society. Athanase
eagerly acts out the role of friendly acquain¬
tance and confidante to Bauman; it placates a
part of his conscience to treat his chosen pup¬
pet in the most civilized fashion. Colonna, in
turn, willingly acts as unappreciated henchman
to Athanase one more time so he can be rid of
his lover's husband. Bauman stubbornly refuses

to acknowledge the fact that his wife has left
him forever and finally transforms his manipu¬
lated situation by deciding to remain near Haas
while she awaits sentencing. But in between,
Bauman's larger manipulation by the state ma¬
chinery makes him as much a victim as Haas. The
very routine and precise way in which the coun¬
terterror group carries this out, in fact,
points him out as only one among many such vic¬
tims.

Birgitt Haas herself, nevertheless, faces the
most terrible of role situations. The other
fictive being the state accuses of bombings and
hijackings now overshadows her actual movements
and choices. It has been as useful to the au¬
thorities that she should live as that she now
should die. Realizing this, she opts to end the
game as quickly as possible by running no far¬
ther. The extraordinary acts she hears attrib¬
uted to herself and her lack of meaningful sup¬
port from her former comrades underscore her
present isolation. Everything conforms beauti¬
fully to the design of those who hold her within
a narrowing circle. Even her private, sensual
self has been probed and examined (if inaccur¬
ately) by Athanase' s squad, who neatly insert
one of their number among her lovers. The de¬
ceit both Haas and Bauman undergo becomes the
true terror of this tale in the viewer's eyes.
Heynemann has put the intrusiveness of the cam¬
era eye to stunning use by creating a composite
picture of a hunter, Ms bait, and his prey. In
this sense, the film's narrative structure,
while employing some classic Hollywood thriller
codes, manages to work all its elements at a
level that engages us in a more participative
and troublesome manner than the passive, purely
entertaining stance most thrillers usually al¬
low.

JUMP CUT NO. 28

The covert activities of the state, as demon¬
strated by Athanase and his employees, are symp¬
tomatic of an organism which not only attacks
its foes by any means possible while maintaining
a facade of legitimacy and normalcy but is also
paranoid to the point of turning in upon itself
in distrust and fear. Athanase and Colonna thus
cannot ever really trust one another. Moreover,
the visible branches of law enforcement do not
want too close an association with Athanase's
type or to know the sordid details of his ac¬
tions on their behalf. (In this respect, their
attitude isn't so different from that shown dur¬
ing the Watergate cover-up when the presidential
office contrived to put itself at one remove
from the mischief of its own "operatives.")

Perhaps the ultimate surprise of BIRGITT HAAS
is that Athanase and his assistants, for all
their omniscient power, fail miserably in their
mission. Because of a final accident of mistim¬
ing, Bauman interrupts the planned murder of
Haas. The secret agents must withdraw and Haas
forces the German police to arrest her— the one
thing they wanted to avoid.

Bauman reacts with dignified outrage to the
revelation of his own manipulation. The most
natural exit from the situation for him is one
which Athnase has not counted on: he refuses to
return home, even at gunpoint. In the face of
such unexpected defiance, Athanase relinquishes
his erstwhile pawn. Insofar as it makes clear
to us the ioward motives and events leading to
one more headline, one more quickly forgotten
chapter in the twilight world of "state" versus
"terrorism," BIRGITT HAAS is an unnerving look
into that closed file we cannot so easily for¬
get— or want to forget. H

WHITE ZOMBIE

HAITIAN HORROR

--Tony Williams

According to certain critics it is impossible to produce films made with¬
in capitalist institutions which criticize imperialist practices. T.W.
Adorno believes that the culture industry always inculcates ideas of order
so as to maintain the status quo.1 Judith Hess develops this idea. Genre
movies are popular, she says, because they temporarily relieve fears a-
roused by recognizing social and political conflicts. Although they ad¬
dress those conflicts, the various genres attempt to resolve conflicts in
simple and reactionary ways. Hess notes three genre characteristics:

First, these films (e.g.. Westerns, Horror and Sci-Fi) never deal
directly with present social and political problems; second, all of
them are set in the non-present. Westerns and horror films take place
in the past— science fiction films, by definition, take place in a
future time. . .Third, the society in which the action takes place is
very simple and does not function as a dramatic force in the film--it
exists as a backdrop against which the few actors work out the central
problem the film presents. 2

Horror films, according to Hess, attempt to resolve disparities between
two contradictory ways of problem solving; rationality VS faith, an irra¬
tional commitment to certain traditional beliefs.-^ I find Hess' approach too
dogmatic. Many examples from past and later genre movies refute it. Fifties
sci-fi movies such as THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, THIS ISLAND EARTH, THEM!
and TARANTULA were clearly located within their contemporary era. Consciously
or unconsciously, they attempted to address themselves to the ideological cur¬
rents of their time. Rescreenings of the sixties TV series THE OUTER LIMITS
reveal contemporary issues of sexism and cold-war paranoia now explicit from
a later perspective. The seventies saw an American Renaissance of "horror"
movies, many of which offered subversive attacks on the family and capitalist
institutions.^ Yet what we see as explicit in that seventies genre was already
implicit in earlier works of the thirties and forties.^ Genre movies can be
riddled with irresolvable tensions and ambiguities which can split the facade
under which the films are produced.

Contradictory elements can enter a narrative to subvert the dominant con¬
cepts the film attempts to project. Certain mechanisms are common to the
horror genre as well as other films. In his article, "The Anatomy of a Pro¬
letarian Film: Warner's MARKED WOMAN," Charles W. Eckert refers to the
Freudian ideas of condensation and displacement to explain the existence in
a film of tensions which can not be consciously resolved. Attempts are made
at fantasy resolutions. But they are not always successful. Condensation
fuses a number of discrete elements or ideas into a single symbol. Dis¬
placement attempts to resolve the dilemma at another level. Thus the way

genre films deal with social tensions can be "both the result of conscious
censorship and a myth-like transposition of the conflict into new terms.

THE WHITE ZOMBIE (1932)

WHITE ZOMBIE was made in 1932, a year which saw not only the worst period
of the Depression but the greatest production of thirties horror films. The
film was directed by Victor Halperin, produced by an independent studio and
released by United Artists. Bela Lugosi appeared once more as the symbol of
a decadent Europe; onto that figure American isolationist fears were projected
and often realized (most notably in DRACULA). According to Carlos Clarens in
his book on horror films, contemwrary reviewers found WHITE ZOMBIE "childish,
old-fashioned and melodramatic."' It was soon forgotten.

An enigma, the films seems to be the only distinctive movie Victor Halperin
directed, with a screenplay by Garnett Weston from his original story, inspired
by the 1929 publication. The Magia Island by William B. Seabrook, an investi¬
gation of contemporary voodoo practices in Haiti. Clarens believes that it was
not the topicality of Seabrook' s chronicles but the fantasy elements that gave
its concept resonance. Clarens concludes.

Whatever period feeling WHITE ZOMBIE possessed at the time of its release
has been erased by the intervening third of a century, making the images
more faded, the period more remote, and the picture itself more completely
mysterious. 8

However, WHITE ZOMBIE has a contemporary relevance. It addresses itself to
a concrete case of U.S. imperialism and is implicitly grounded in a disguised
critique based on the devices of condensation and displacement, as described
by Charles Eckert. The film's only enigma is whether its critique is conscious
or unconscious.

Superficially, the plot reveals nothing remarkable. New Yorker Madeline
arrives in Haiti to marry her fiance Neil, a bank employee in Port-au-Prince.

On board she met wealthy plantation owner, Charles Beaumont, who now insists
the ceremony be held on his estate. At the film's opening Madeline and Neil
witness a voodoo burial service at a crossroads, which location will prevent
the body from being dug out and used for zombie purposes. Further along they
encounter Legendre with his zombie entourage.

After the couple's arrival at Beaumont's mansion, Beaumont goes to meet
Legendre at the latter's mill, worked by zombie slaves. Hopelessly in love
with Madeline, Beaumont enlists Legendre's aid. During the wedding banquet,
Legendre turns Madeline into a living zombie. Later Legendre, Beaumont and
the zombie bodyguard steal her body from Beaumont's mausoleum to become

rCAMEHCCr

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An Overview!

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Kenneth Coutts-Smith, Posthourgeois Ideology and Visual
Culture

Marc Zimmerman, Francois Perus and Latin American
Modernism: The Interventions of Althusser

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JUMP CUT NO. 28

Beaumont's mindless slave in Legendre's Castle of the Living Dead. Legendre
then begins the same process with Beaumont.

Discovering Madeline's empty tomb, Neil enlists the aid of Dr. Bruner, a
missionary, to go to Legendre's Castle, where they finally win the contest of
wills. Legendre's zombie bodyguard perishes while the semi-alive Beaumont
kills Legendre, falling to a joint death upon the rocks beneath the Castle
walls. Freed from the contaminating forces of the Old World, Madeline revives.
The American couple are reunited, free to return to the "innocent" America
they left.

WHITE ZOMBIE seems to operate on a fantasy level. Its opening scenes artic¬
ulate the film's manifest level: generic conflict between white American
rationality and native superstition. The first image is a long shot of a
Negro funeral party. Small titles "White" appear on the frame's top half.

Then, below, single drumbeats accompany the appearance of each individual
letter of the larger title "Zombie." A Negro funeral chant begins. Neil and
Madeline appear inside a coach. Dissolve from a long shot of the coach to a
close up of Legendre's threatening eyes. Encountering Legendre at the road¬
side, the Negro coachman attempts to ask directions before he departs in terror
at the sight of Legendre's zombie bodyguard. Legendre's black hat and cloak
and his eyes have unmistakable Satanic associations. Thrust into a strange
environment of superstitious burial party, stereotyped frightened Negro coach¬
man, Satanic villain and zombies, Madeline feels sexually threatened by
Legendre, who has taken her scarf (later to be used for her transformation).

Much of this is similar to Universal horror themes of the thirties.

But now the foreign environment is not Frankenstein's castle but Haiti.

In 1932 it was no fantastic past environment but a Caribbean island
under American occupation.

HAITIAN HISTORY AND WHITE ZOMBIE

Haiti was under American occupation from 1915-34. Although freed
from French colonial domination in early nineteenth century by Toussaint
L'Ouverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines, Haiti experienced many problems
both internally and externally. Internally, color and class problems
dividing the well-educated mullattos from impoverished blacks originated
from that period of early occupation. Externally, Haiti tempted not only
European powers seeking to infiltrate the Western Hemisphere but also the
U.S.'s newly emerging imperialist ambitions. Once U.S. won its own West,
its accompanying historical, territorial policies began to extend into
the Caribbean. Official U.S. isolationist foreign policies were seen as
relevant to Europe only and did not apply to the Western Hemisphere.

Despite Woodrow Wilson's claims to repudiate Theodore Roosevelt's inter¬
pretation of the Monroe Doctrine, Wilson's administration had more in¬
stances of intervention than the previous two. By 1915 U.S. diplomats
saw Haiti as ripe for invasion.

Haiti was then in political turmoil, nothing new; the opposing faction
had executed the incumbent President along with his most feared admini¬
strator, the chief executioner. German businessmen resident in Haiti did
not form such numbers as to justify U.S. claims of large scale espionage,
and though a clause in Haiti's Constitution forbade foreigners to own
land, some Germans had married Haitian citizens to bypass it. In 1915,
the U.S. made a pretence for involvement to restore national order in the
face of disturbing internal conditions.

On September 3rd, 1915, the invading U.S. Marines proclaimed martial
law. In 1916 a formal treaty legalized the occupation; in it Wilson set
up an all-powerful financial committee, a constabulary organized and over¬
seen by U.S. officers, settlement of foreign claims, and overall authority
delegated to a U.S. military officer rather than a Haitian civil official.

In his 1971 book. The Ameriaan Oaaupation of Haiti, Hans Schmidt notes
that the model was Britain's occupation of Egypt. Racial condescension
towards Haitian citizens soon began. Worse was to follow.

Desiring economic power the Americans removed the foreign landowning
clause from the Constitution. Up to that time, every one of Haiti's six¬
teen Constitutions had possessed this clause, the natural aftermath of
Haiti's original colonial experience. In 1917 the Haiti National Assem¬
bly refused to concur and attempted a new anti-U.S. Constitution, which
led to the U.S. Marines' dissolving the Assembly, on the orders of the
puppet President. The ownership clause was then dropped from the 1918
Constitution. Original peasant freeholders became peons, and foreign
dominated plantations replaced an independent land tenure system. Slav¬
ery also followed when the North Americans introduced a forced labor
system for their 1918 road-building program. Internal racial conflicts
between mulattos and blacks worsen.id under American occupation, partic¬
ularly with U.S. officers from the Deep South preferring the former.

Periodic guerrilla uprisings occurred, but not until the 1929 Cayes mass¬
acre and resulting public disorders were repressive powers gradually
abandoned. In 1934 the U.S. occupation officially ended.

WHITE ZOMBIE has no reference to any of this historical background. *,

Its generic associations as a fantasy could easily locate the film's
action in Bahnhof Frankenstein or the South Sea Islands. Yet, the very
location used undermines the stereotyped functions the characters are
supposed to play out on the film's manifest level.

In genre terms, Neil is the hero. Yet in a film set in 1932 Haiti,
his position as clerk in the Port-au-Prince Bank makes him part of the
influx of U.S. personnel which had disastrous effects on Haiti's economic
and social life. The white-collar administrators, of whom Neil is a part,
dominated financial institutions and thus felt racially superior to the
subordinated Haitians, both the cultured mulatto elite and Negroes.

Although some social fraternization of Americans and Haitians began in the
early period of occupation, before servicemen's families arrived in 1916,

Jim Crow racial segregation soon began. The character Neil's underlying
racial attitudes appear in his reaction to Dr. Bruner's suggestion that
the kidnapped Madeline may be in native hands: "Surely, you don't mean
she's alive? In the hands of natives? God, no! She's better dead than
that!" Despite their manifest roles as innocent hero and heroine, Neil
and Madeline implicitly partake of the U.S. corruption of Haitian life.

Plantation owner Beaumont seems the genre villain, representing indi¬
vidual aberration in an otherwise harmonious social structure. He wants
Madeline even as a mindless zombie. The film's iconic operations ‘stress
Beaumont's decadence. Although North American, he dresses in English
hunting clothes, owns an English baronial mansion, and notoriously exer¬
cises "lord of the manor rights" over visiting females. Beaumont has
an equally snobbish English butler. Silver, whom he employs to do his
dirty work. Dr. Bruner is suspicious of Beaumont's offer of his mansion
for the couple's wedding: "Mr. Beaumont never struck me like a fairy god¬
father to people like you unless - " He pauses to look at Madeline.

Beaumont makes a final attempt to win Madeline before the ceremony, then
uses Legendre's methods to achieve his sexual property rights by making
Madeline his pliant zombie mistress. His desires relate to classic nine¬
teenth century decadent romanticism, particularly the necrophiliac strains
illustrated in Poe's Annabel Lee.

Beaumont's British pretensions set him apart from the "normal" North
Americans, Neil, Madeline and Bruner. These pretensions, as seen in
film stereotypes, correspond to hatred of England during the inter-war
years (and even after, as George Orwell's forties journalism reveals).

Cynics ascribed U.S. involvement in World War I as resulting from
British deceit. Father Coughlin's Christian Front believed that a British-
Jewish conspiracy began the war. U.S. participation was supposedly
secretly designed as a strategy to save the British Empire. Similar
critical beliefs were behind attacks on the League of Nations. Some

progressives hated Britain as a symbol of monarchy, privileged classes,
and seat of Lombard Street international financiers. In the film ISLAND
OF LOST SOULS (1933), Charles Laughton's Dr. Moreau personifies English
tea-drinking imperialism dominating an island populated by mutant beast-
men— an obvious satire on Anglo-colonial ism.

Yet, despite these signs of decadence, the character Beaumont is still
North American; the film can not escape this. Though WHITE ZOMBIE attempts
to disguise it, Beaumont is as much a "wholesome American" as Neil and
Madeline. He has not inherited his mansion but ruthlessly acquired it as
a result of U.S. abolition of the alien landownership prohibition in the
Haitian Constitution.

Nor are his British pretensions accidental. Young imperialist America
had hundreds of years of the British experience from which to learn. Con¬
temporary U.S. occupation reports explicitly recognized this; Hans Schmidt
points out that these reports even drew parallels with British rule in
India. Beaumont inhabits a baronial castle run by hundreds of domestic
servants. He represnts a microcosm of the contemporary authoritarian
regime exercising power over a native population deemed incapable of
governing itself.

Despite the butler Silver's warnings, Beaumont decides to request
Legendre's aid and visits Legendre's mill. Beaumont finds there a
macabre echo of the system which has given him power. The mill offers a
dark mirror image of U.S. colonial occupation. Negro zombies work the
mill grinder. Supervising them are two of Legendre's bodyguards. The
ex-Genderme Captain inhabits the top floor, the brigand chief below. When
Legendre and Beaumont meet, Legendre sits behind a desk with the former
chief executioner at his side. This most prominent zombie first attacks
Silver and Neil later in the film--as indispensible as the chief execu¬
tioner to the 1915 executed President. Also in an obvious parallel to
Haitian society, we see that the Negros do the menial work while the
mulattos supervise.

Class conflict riddled Haiti's social structure before, during and
after the U.S. occupation. U.S. educational and economic development
programs originally attempted to favor the Negro peasants and undermine
the mulatto elite's privileged position. Client President Borno
strongly subscribed to this initial policy of breaking down class bar¬
riers and eliminating the pernicious elite exploitation of the impoverished
masses. But the occupation actually enhanced the elite's power, as
Schmidt points out. American administrators preferred the well-educated
mulatto collaborators who were versed in European culture, a heritage of
earlier French occupation, as opposed to the unpolished former black
strongmen rulers. Although black nationalism began after the 1929 up¬
risings, it was not until the 1946 black revolution that mulatto domi¬
nation eventually ended.

Legendre offers Beaumont a supply of Negro workers: "They are not
worried about long hours. You could make good use of men like mine on
your plantation." Black zombie slavery in the film thus represents a
macabre version of the forced labor system which the U.S. inflicted on
the Haitian population in 1918. This system dated back to medieval
feudalism and was last used in 1880 by the British to dredge Egyptian
canals. The independently minded Haitians found it offensive. It
reminded them of the slavery overthrown by Toussaint L'Ouverture and Jean
Jacques Dessalines. Many citizens were forced to work outside their own
districts and often labored together in chains. Gendarme guards exer¬
cised close, often brutal supervision, with native gendarmes the worst
offenders. Although the forced labor system was abolished in 1918, it
caused native guerrilla uprisings. The U.S. Marines put these down with
unparalleled ferocity for the period, and the U.S. atrocities in many
instances resembled those in Vietnam. Legendre's mill thus not only
echoes the earlier forced labor system that the U.S. imposed on the native
population but the contemporary miserable servitude of Negro Haitians.

Legendre's zombie bodyguard mirrors U.S. domination of both the privi¬
leged and revolutionary forces in Haiti: rich man. Minister of the Inte¬
rior, chief executioner. Captain of Gendarmes, magician and brigand
chief. Although played by white actors, the first three resemble
mulattos while the last two Negroes concisely echo the racial divisions
of Haitian class society. Although all were once his "enemies,"

Legendre now controls them all, just as the U.S. did Haiti in 1932.

The character of one once affluent zombie who conducts Beaumont to the
mill bears significant connotations. Legendre hates him more than the
others, calling him a "swine— swollen with riches... He fought against my
will to the last. Even yet I have trouble in fighting him." By accom¬
panying Beaumont that zombie prefigures his fate. This figure obviously
represents the rich French-cultured mulatto element within Haitian society,
hated by the majority of the black population. Legendre's speech uncan¬
nily echoes two levels of feeling against the figure. On the one hand
there is class hatred. On the other hand, there is the U.S. distrust of
that element of the population more affluent and better educated than
themselves. Such a collaborator can never escape suspicion.

The second figure of Legendre's bodyguard, the Minister of the Interior,
obviously also comes from the mulatto elite and represents the client Pres-

‘ T'

ident and better-educated officials with whom the American preferred to
deal rather than the former black leaders. And, as mentioned earlier, the
chief executioner always stands at Legendre's side. In real life, the
native population held this figure in awe not only because of his status
but also because he consulted the President on how to control the masses.
By 1915 he had such a powerful position that U.S. reports on the Haitian
riots mentioned his death in the same lines reporting the execution of
the incumbent President. In that environment he was certainly no minor
official. The fourth member of Legendre's bodyguard, the Captain of
Gendarmes seems the only recognizable white man among the group, a rec¬
ognition of the racial group of this police sector. Once in occupation,
the U.S. could not trust any sector of the Haitian population to estab¬
lish and maintain military control. Thus, most Gendarme officers were
former Marines given special powers by the Haitian client-government.

Although the figures of magician and brigand chief at first seem out
of place in the bodyguard, their positions do actually correspond to the
contemporary situation of colonial control. Both represent Haitian
forces who intermittently fought against U.S. domination during 1915-34.

In the film, Legendre mentions that he'd been apprenticed to the magician
but gained the upper hand and tortured him for the magical powers
Legendre now possesses. Since religion provides a nationalist element
to exploited groups, we can see the revolutionary associations of this
figure. In Haiti, slaves used voodoo to maintain a common identity and
provide a cloak for conspiratorial liasons. Like all efficient dictators
Legendre realizes the importance of mobilizing the religious factor as a
prop for his regime, and the magician's Negro appearance is by no means
accidental .

The "brigand chief," like the magician, represents another resistant
sector brought under government control. He is undoubtedly a guerrilla
leader representing Haiti's revolutionary groups. These were peasant sol¬
diers who enlisted in short term military adventures, creating numerous
revolutions before the U.S. occupation, after which the U.S. regarded them
as a dangerous force requiring control. They played a major role in the
anti-American forced labor riots of 1918-19. Like the Vietcong they moved
in a mountainous interior with great mobility. Ruthlessly put down in
1919, they still existed, made raids on the occupying power throughout
the period of control. U.S. military reports designate them simply as
"bandits," suppressing their real status, just as the film and the char¬
acter Legendre do to this "brigand chief" zombie.

CONDENSATION AND DISPLACEMENT IN THE CHARACTERIZATION

Bela Lugosi's role as Legendre is clearly significant. He condenses
several symbolic traits relevant to the U.S. Establishment's projected
guilt fears. If the contemporary U.S. then saw decadent Europe as exclu¬
sively responsible for its ills, so Legendre/Lugosi stands as the cause
for Haiti's problems.

In the film Haiti's status as an occupied American colony is never
mentioned. WHITE ZOMBIE represses depicting the dominance of imperial¬
ist politics and economics, replacing it with images of voodoo and the
supernatural. Legendre's threat towards the heroine seems exclusively
sexual. But if the repressed returns in a distorted form containing
elements of the forbidden, then Lugosi's representing Legendre functions
similarly. Legendre's personality, as represented by the film, contains
contradictory elements. These disturb the film's manifest content and
subvert its whole attempt at fantasy resolution. This ambiguity is also
found in Neil's, Madeline's, and Dr. Bruner's characters to different
degrees. Legendre represents a distorted embodiment of U.S. guilt
feelings concerning the occupation.

On one level, Legendre stands as the evil foreigner, the outsider.

He is disdainfully rebuffed by Beaumont at their first meeting. A
medium shot shows Legendre's hand entering right frame while Beaumont
turns his face away to ignore it. A close up follows of the hand
slowly clenching in anger followed by a low angle shot of Legendre's
Satanic face. But as a mill owner, he works in the lower echelons of
society. Despite being a necessary cog, he clearly hates the rich and
their class system.

In a reversal in Legendre's Castle, Beaumont undergoes zombie trans¬
formation while Legendre carves his candlestick representation. Pathet¬
ically attempting to touch Legendre, Beaumont's hand enters right frame
Lengendre pauses, commenting, "You refused to shake hands with me once I
remember," but pats Beaumont's hand like a father does a child (or as a
condescending colonial to a native) saying, "Well, well, we understand
each other better now." Brushing his hands as if ridding them from some
imaginary pollution, Legendre returns to his carving.

Legendre's class hatred embodies Depression U.S.A.'s vengeance fan¬
tasies about businessmen— the decadent Europe-loving rich who escaped
Black Thursday and opposed relief policies for the needy. This element
benefitted most from imperialist ventures.

WHITE ZOMBIE thus has important links with the socio-economic aspects
of the horror genre exemplified in films such as THE DEVIL AND DANIEL
WEBSTER, RACE WITH THE DEVIL, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and DAWN OF
THE DEAD. In one recent example, THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, the house acts
as a condensation symbol for the repressed frustrations of the James
Brolin character. He feels oppressed by the economic demands of his
family committments, but this never lead him to the logical conclusion
that the capitalist ethos of monogamy plus mortgage is ruining his life.
Similarly Bela Lugosi's Legendre becomes an imaginary condensation of
the way that U.S. ideology understand the Third World's contemporary
hatred of imperialism, an understanding which can not be consciously
expressed.

Similar condensations operate with the other characters. We have al¬
ready noted that Neil could not in fact be pure hero by virtue of his
involvement in the imperialist machinery and complicity in the ideo¬
logical attitudes behind the Haiti occupation. Neil and Beaumont dem¬
onstrate certain similarities despite their moral positions as hero and
villain. A certain element of mirror imagery is present in WHITE ZOMBIE.
Both men stand at opposite ends of the class and economic structure of
society. Both are fascinated by Madeline. Neil wins her by legal mar¬
riage. Beaumont uses the supernatural to possess her body. They want
her as property, and both idealize her purity. Beaumont regards her as
a "flower" and uses a poisoned rose in Madeline's bridal bouquet to turn
her into a zombie. In the cantina scene after Madeline's burial, when
Neil is going to pieces, Madeline's image appears, in her bridal gown,
belying both her supposed decomposition and Neil's sordid environment.
Madeline's image appears on a wall superimposed, over a female shadow,
and Neil attempts to grasp it; he is left with the shadow over his heart.
Madeline's macabre fate is now related to Neil's over- idealized fantasies.

Neil and Beaumont possess Madeline as living marriage partner and
living dead zombie, and there are significant links between the attitudes
of both. When Madeline suddenly dies, Neil speaks her name once and ar¬
ticulates her property status twice: "Madeline. .my wife, my wife." Like
Beaumont, he has necrophiliac impulses: "I kissed Madeline when she lay
in the coffin and her lips were cold."

In genre terms, Madeline appears as the archetypal white female victim,
the vulnerable feminine aspect of American matriarchy always in danger
from Indians, monsters, flying saucers, foreign invaders or internal sub¬
versives such as reds, black panthers and hippies. As bride-to-be she
reflects her country's capitalist possessive ethos, whether it be in mar¬
riage to Neil legally, to Beaumont's desires or to Legendre's aims. She

JUMP CUT NO. 28

is the center of the conflict presented in WHITE ZOMBIE. As with Legendre,
several elements are condensed in her constructed persona but in a special
way. Her manifest status is that of threatened female victim. But her
latent role is also significant. Madeline represents Haiti itself: the
battleground for domination between what is seen as a legal possession by
the U.S. forces and the illegal threat of the alien force represented by
Legendre.

In a different way from Legendre, Madeline condenses the guilt feelings
occasioned by U.S. occupation. She personally experiences what has hap¬
pened to Haiti, moving from the freedom of life to the slavery of death.

Her wedding gown is shroud-like, connoting her passage from individual
innocence to propertied death. Earlier, preparing for the wedding cere¬
mony, Madeline had appeaVed undressed, wearing underwear with a map of
Haiti design. Madeline is possessed partner within the capitalist mar¬
riage institution and Haiti is North American property. In her zombie
state, she loses all will power and thus echoes Haiti's plight deprived
of government and Constitution.

Dr. Bruner represents white colonialist Christianity opposed to the
native voodoo religion of the oppressed. He seems a benevolent mission¬
ary aiding Neil, but is also a cog in the imperialist machine despite his
long residence in Haiti. He has remarkable links with Legendre, the
"shadow" representative of American colonialism. Just as Legendre uses
voodoo, Dr. Bruner similarly uses it or benefits from its associations.
Legendre first appears at the roadside wearing dark "Quaker" hat and
cloak. Bruner wears similar clothes. Madeline initially mistakes Bruner
for Legendre in the garden, and a dog's howl announces his arrival, the
same howl that occurs in the graveyard scene where Beaumont appears with
Legendre.

To Neil, Bruner says, "Because I'm a preacher they think I'm a magi¬
cian." Although he scientifically rationalizes Madeline's zombie condition,

he finally has to resort to voodoo to save her. Bruner enlists the aid
of a Negro houngan, inversely paralleling Legendre's use of a magician.

In the castle scenes, we see a shadow on the floor that seems to be
Legendre's zombie magician; we later realize it is Bruner in disguise.

Finally, when Bruner puts out his hand to prevent Madeline from killing
Neil, we hear on the soundtrack, the same tones earlier accompanying
Legendre's successful attempt on Madeline's mind. If Bruner has not
been drawn undeniably into the heart of darkness, as was Mrs. Rand in
I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, he is already on the way.

LOCATIONS

Important elements exist in this film concerning its contemporary
heritage. In terms of mise-en-scene, displacement occurs in two major
ways: denial of contemporary history and use of location.

As we have already seen, the film has no reference to recent politics
or history. Were it not for a recognizable location, WHITE ZOMBIE could
have been set anywhere in the European Ruritanias of Universal horror
movies. By denying contemporary history, the film displaces class
(imperialist) politics and economics on to the levels of the personal,
sexual property rights, and magic-voodoo. Yet because the film has been
set in a clearly definable historical location, where American landowners
rule over huge estates and Negro slaves work in the mills, the trans¬
position is not an easy one. Disturbing elements remain. But WHITE
ZOMBIE diminishes the force of its location by removing the conflict
from identifiable Haiti to the mythical Universal-like world of the
Castle of the Living Dead.

The Castle of the Living Dead is Legendre's fantasy estate on an
undefinable part of Haiti. Inside this mountain-top castle Madeline
is the captive princess. Her clothes now denote her change of status.

She is no longer the modern American. Within the Gothic interiors she
wears an Elizabethan costume with spider's web design and plays Lizst
on the piano to a repentant Beaumont.

Legendre's Castle presumably belongs to the French colonial occupa¬
tion of Haiti. It is the Europe of Frankenstein's heritage, where in¬
nocent North America ventures at its peril away from its supposedly un¬
contaminated hearthland. Legendre's rise in status accompanies Beaumont's
decline. In the Castle, Legendre now wears a well-cut tailored suit in
contrast to the shabby clothes worn at the mill. His power becomes
absolute, uniting the supernatural to the economic. In his final scenes
he wears a tuxedo similar to that worn earlier by Beaumont.

But the Castle does not represent a completely alien world. It
provides a macabre mirror image to those other worlds outside. Inside,

Legendre and his zombie bodyguard rule over Madeline, Beaumont, "Silver
and the Negro maids; that locale and its social relations parallel
Beaumont's plantation (with its butler, Negro maids and liveried ser¬
vants) and Legendre's mill with its similar hierarchical divisions.

Finally, good triumphs over evil in a fantasy resolution. Beaumont
redeems his decadence by pushing Legendre into the sea after his zombie
bodyguard and Beaumont falls in as well. Both the monstrous European and
the decadent un-American symbols vanish from the scene, leaving
Madeline and the audience to reawake to "reality." As Madeline becomes
conscious, her last words to Neil are, "Oh, Neil, I dreamed." The
lovers' attempted embrace is interrupted by Dr. Bruner's request: "Excuse
me, but have you got a match?" As the white colonial figure and alter-
ego to Legendre, Bruner remains to restore normality and repression.

The film ends.

Two years after the release of WHITE ZOMBIE U.S. occupation ended.

By 1934 the last Marine had left. Haiti's nightmare ended but the
deep scars left on the national psyche are evident today. Although
we do not know, after fifty years, how much was deliberately inten¬
tional in the film, the film has much to say about U.S. imperialism
then, and WHITE ZOMBIE provides an important example of the disguised
and suppressed radical critique the horror genre can often manifest.

Cited in Jtidith Hess, "Genre Films and the Status Quo," JUMP CUT, No. 1
(May-June, 1974), p. 1.

^ Hess, pp. 1 , 16, 18.

For a survey of developments in this field, see Robin Wood, The American
NighPr.are: Essays on the Horror Film (Ottawa: Canadian Film Institute, 1979).

This will be the theme of my forthcoming book. Family: The American Night¬
mare.

® Charles W. Eckert, "The Anatomy of a Proletarian Film: Warner's MARKED
WOMAN," Film Quarterly, Winter 1973-74, p. 20.

^ Carlos Clarens, Horror Movies (London: Panther, 1968), p. 136.

Clarens, p. 137. ^

JUMP CUT NO. 28

COAL MINER’S DAUGHTER
HONEYSUCKLE ROSE

THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA

Taking the class

—Mary Bufwack

With "Coal Miner's Daughter," a song of working-class pride, Loretta Lynn
had a country hit in 1970. Six years later she used its title for her
autobiography, which in 1980 was turned into a popular film. This trans¬
formation of cultural materials provides a direct example of how the film
industry, in its continual groping for new ideas, has turned to the lives
and culture of working people as a source for new material.

Eighteen movies with country music-related themes were produced in 1980
and 1981. This explosion of films followed closely on the heels of Holly¬
wood's financially successful movie/sound track, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER
(1977). Films about country performers promised to be profitable because
of the growing popularity of country music among diverse audiences. The
last decade saw a 25 percent increase in country radio stations, to a total
of 2,403. In 1980 there were twelve television network country specials,
twenty-three syndicated country programs, and numerous locally produced
country shows filling the Saturday afternoon airwaves. Country record
sales were only slightly behind rock-and-roll sales, and while record sales
were off 30 percent, country record sales grew by 20 percent. Hollywood
was quick to realize that films about country performers make good vehicles
for songs, sound tracks, and greater profits. Three recent films centered
on country music are COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER (1980), HONEYSUCKLE ROSE (1981),
and THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA (1981). Each of these films
tries in different ways to appear as an authentic presentation of the life
of a country performer. COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER can be judged against the
life of Loretta Lynn and her autobiography of the same title. HONEYSUCKLE
ROSE acquires authenticity through singer/songwriter Willie Nelson, who
plays the starring role of country entertainer Buck Bonham. However, the
character Buck's life as a continually struggling musicain in no way resem¬
ble? that of Willie Nelson, whose early success in Nashville in the 1950s
put him in the country music mainstream. Rather j the film draws on the
outlaw image Nelson has forged since his return to Texas and encourages us
to believe Nelson is playing himself. THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN
GEORGIA uses neither a real-life story nor seasoned country performers, but
it attempts to generalize about the problems of aspiring performers through
the lives of Travis and Amanda Child, a brother-and-sister team traveling
to Nashville and country stardom.

The portrayals of country performers in COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER, HONEY¬
SUCKLE ROSE, and THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA are different
from those in earlier Hollywood films. The in-depth probing of performers'
personal and emotional lives contrasts with the superficial presentations
of country performers in film shorts as early as 1929, in cowboy films
throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and in teenage rock films in the 1950s.

Performers' lives in 1980 are not like the rags-to-riches-through-hard-work
saga of Jimmie Davis (LOUISIANA, 1944), best known for writing "You Are My
Sunshine." The films' endings are not the simultaneous discovery of love
and success which Elvis found, as in his semiautobiographical story of a
naive but gifted performer in LOVING YOU, 1956. Nor do contemporary coun¬
try performers' stories end tragically as did both the film of Hank Wil¬
liams's life (YOUR CHEATIN' HEART, 1964) and the story of a dissipated,
drunken, pill-popping singer based on the life of Waylon Jennings (PAYDAY,

1973). In 1980, performers' lifes are depicted on film not without ten¬
sions, but, without any simple solutions, the singers keep on living and
trying. The more recent film characters who are country singers are not
distinguished by the largeness of their accomplishments or indulgences but
by the tenacity with which they pursue their own vision of a life worth
living.

Traditionally, the mass media have portrayed the white working-class au¬
dience of country music as macho and racist, a source of social evil and a
symbol of a dying America. An exception was Peter Bogdonovich's THE LAST
PICTURE SHOW (1971), which used Hank Williams's music to highlight the ali¬
enation, yet strength, of working people as they confronted a changing
world and an uncertain future*in postwar America. Far more often, the
white working class has been depicted in Hollywood film as a brutish and
spiritually poverty stricken group. For example, FIVE EASY PIECES (1970),
which used a Tammy Wynette sound track, condescendingly drew parallels be¬
tween middle-class alienation and working people's wasted liveS"With the
sadistic power of the former shown as preferable. In DELIVERANCE (1970),
professional men returned to a natural setting to rejuvenate themselves,
but rather than peace and wholeness they found an animalistic violent back-
woods inbred horde whose only link to civilized sentiment was their music.

And Robert Altman's disillusionment and cynicism in NASHVILLE (1975) was

out of country

middle-class America's answer to country performers, who often were assert¬
ing in their music that they had inherited the strengths upon which America
was built.

These films used authentic country and folk music to identify characters
as poor and working class and yet encouraged the further denigration of
working people and their culture. They presumed the social system was de¬
ficient, but their search for an end to middle-class alienation in the com¬
munal and cultural life of poor and marginal people was based on a night¬
marelike fantasy. The status quo was defended, not by a positive portrayal
of life but by depicting the working class as mired in stupidity, shallow¬
ness, and brutality.

The denigration of working people and country music did not escape the
notice of Nashville musicians, country fans, or film dirctors aiming their
films at working-class audiences. Country music and working people fared
better in films with popular male stars who were assigned a working-class
identity. Burt Reynolds was a Robin Hood, a con-man, and a country music
promoter in John Avildsen's comedy set in the South, W. W. AND THE DIXIE
DANCE KINGS (1976). EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE (1978), one of the highest
grossing films in Hollywood history, also used popular stereotypes of coun¬
try music for comic effect.

Loretta Lynn's already well-formed defensive working-class attitude was
strengthened in, this cultural climate, and her autobiography was written as
a direct response to NASHVILLE. In the introduction to coal Miner's Daugh¬
ter she writes:

... Well, I met that girl who played the top country singer in the
movie. She came to Nashville and talked to me and watched me perform
for a few weeks. If she tried to imitate me in the movie, that's
their problem. If they really wanted me, why didn't they just ask
me?

But I ain't worrying about no movies. My records are still sell¬
ing, and I get more offers for shows than I can handle. So if you're
wondering whether that character in the movie is me, it ain't. This
book is me. I've got my own life to lead.

The directors of the three films I wish to discuss here— COAL MINER'S
DAUGHTER, THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA, and HONEYSUCKLE ROSE—
believed the authentic tone of their films would contribute to a more posi¬
tive image of country performers. Michael Apted had experience filming
regional stories and the world of music in England and wanted COAL MINER'S
DAUGHTER to be realistic, loving, and close to the life of Loretta Lynn.
Jerry Schatzberg describes himself as a fan of Texas music and believes
HONEYSUCKLE ROSE, like his film THE SEDUCTION OF JOE TYNAN, expresses the
problems of people confronting corrupt systems. Ron Maxwell had experience
in public television before directing THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN
GEORGIA. He chose the script because he identified with the characters and
wanted the film to counteract negative myths about the South.

Despite their intentions, the dirctors did not do justice to the rich
stories of southern working people and country performers. Their use of
cultural and social reality was guided by concerns that create distorted
images. Apted consciously chose to leave out any references to unioniza¬
tion in mining communities because he believed that even broadly defined
political issues would distort Loretta's story. He ignored Lynn's own po¬
litical concerns and the benefits she has performed for miners and Native
Americans. Schatzberg wanted HONEYSUCKLE ROSE to be a love story through
music but was unconcerned with the range of issues generally dealt with in
Texas country music. Maxwell made THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA
a sympathetic story by stripping the southern community of any distinct
identity except for an evil, violent sheriff. Even the music performed by
Quaid and McNichol is more pop and rock than country.

It's unfortunate that the directors did not stay closer to stories drawn
from the actual lives of country performers. If they had, these films
might have raised problems shared by working people, problems that country
singers raise in their songs. Country entertainers' lives are extreme rep¬
resentations of a central world ng-cl ass dilemma: how is one to retain ties
with friends, neighbors, and family and a pride in one's background and at
the same time aspire to the material wealth, fulfilling work, and personal
freedom promised by class mobility? Country performers attempt to live in
both worlds but remain marginal to both. Though often rich, most perform¬
ers have working-class backgrounds, and even those who don't must maintain

JUMP CUT NO. 28

town after the funeral, Conrad Joins her. Even having made a decisive
choice against family, Amanda gets both career and family.

While these films end on a note that affirms the necessity of the family,
none portrays the family as able to satisfy individual psychological needs
or so attractive that it should be chosen over creative work. Lynn's fami¬
ly in Kentucky is warm and good natured, but Loretta's marriage to Ooo only
offers a round of battles and a life of loneliness. Buck's wife turns fam¬
ily life into erotic play, but she refuses to go on the road with him and
he gets restless after only a few days at home. Amanda rejects the se¬
cluded and quiet life of the small town policeman who has a major diversion
in target practice. Even children do not provide reason enough to keep
Loretta or Buck off the road. Family life does not engage the interests of
these performers, and relations between the spouses appear to have little
depth. A spouse's tenacity and continuing love offers indispensable sup¬
port to the performer, but since shared concerns are minimal, what holds
families together remains mysterious.

Work is portrayed as personally gratifying, social, and a source of en¬
joyment. This romanticized image of work, which can compete with a senti¬
mentalized image of the family, ignores many of the alienating aspects of
work in the music business. Lynn's fans are voracious consumers driving
her to a mental collapse, but we see the roles of agents, corporate execu¬
tives, and record producers as only supportive. The agent whom Amanda
Child contacts is open and helpful, and the worst problem Bonham has is
whether or not he will wear different clothes. Work for Buck and Amanda is
an erotic party, not the exhausting grind faced by Lynn. The primary crit¬
icism these films make of work is its threat to the family, not its profit
motive and corporate structure, which change performers into commodities,
separating performers from the social roots of their inspiration and pro¬
ducing a negative impact on the culture as a whole.

Since career threatens the family, the promise of wealth would seem like
the obvious motivation justifying the career, but each of these films de¬
nies the monetary motive. Neither is the impulse toward career socially
rooted. Lynn's motivations have a Freudian cast— pushed into singing by
her husband, at her father's graveside she resolves to become a singing
success. Is it only to immortalize her coal-mining father in song? In
real life, while Lynn's father was exceptionally important to her, she has
often expressed the pleasure she receives from singing, writing, and commu¬
nicating with an audience. In HONEYSUCKLE ROSE, Buck Bonham has an artis¬
tic, individual vision that compels him to make music; he believes that
success will come to him after companies have exhausted the less committed
and inventive performers. Although the film depicts his individualism by
nothing more than the way he dresses, he is shown as uncompromising in his
intention to continue to perform. Amanda Child enjoys the adulation of the
crowd, and through performing on stage she is transformed from a dependent
girl to an independent woman. The audience and performer's mutual satis¬
faction in creating a shared experience and the performer's need to influ¬
ence a larger social sphere never receive their due in these films as moti¬
vation or as social reality.

By reducing the drive to perform to individual psychological needs, the
performer's culture is reduced in the films to a series of personal state¬
ments. The nature of culture as a phenomenon shared and produced by a so¬
cial group is replaced by an image of the performer as alone, expressing
personal emotions. The music in these films seems to grow directly from
love experiences. Loretta Lynn's songs, even those with social references
beyond herself, are counterposed to personal events. In COAL MINER'S
DAUGHTER Lynn sings "You Ain't Woman Enough" after catching Doo in the
backseat of a car in the arms of another woman, but real-life Loretta Lynn
claims she wrote the song after a fan accused her of stealing that woman's
man. In fact, Lynn often writes songs to express her fans' lives even if
their experiences are not her own. The songs Buck sings in HONEYSUCKLE
ROSE are even more personal. They substitute for dialogue about interper¬
sonal relationships between himself and his wife and lover. Travis and
Amanda Child similarly put their love lives into song. Like all performers
they give personal emotions greater strength and depth through song, but
their songs seem truncated presentations of the range of human emotions as
well as limited presentations of the wide range of concerns country music
usually addresses. The special relationship of the country audience and
performer in which the performer expresses the lives and desires of the
audience is reduced in these films to shared experiences in love. Elimin¬
ating personal responses to other events threatens to reduce performers to
singers who remain interesting only so long as their love lives seem pain¬
ful and compelling. The personal love life as the main source of musical
inspiration imposes a limiting view in these films of culture and of ar¬
tists.

an identity with working-class life for they are part of a musical culture
which assumes the task of representing and interpreting the lives of its
working-class audience. Commercial success distances performers from the
material and social reality of working-class life but does not fully inte¬
grate them into a middle-class world.

In all three films, the working-class dimensions of the country perform¬
er's life are glossed over and the terms of the central dramatic conflict
are changed. The primary tension in the life of a country entertainer is
transformed from the personal and social problems of class mobility to
those of a talented individual who must make a personal choice between a
career and a family. In other words, problems shared by the working class
are transformed into problems of middle-class professionals. This "story"
transformation is ideological and has economic repercussions. The central
character's dilemma now leds broad middle-class audiences identify with the
film.

Even the story of a performer as class identified as Loretta Lynn is re¬
duced to the tensions between career and family. COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER
accomplishes this by isolating Loretta and her family from more extended
social ties and portraying Loretta as a loner. The film opens with Loretta
alone on a horse. Here Sissy Spacek's quiet and enigmatic acting style
turns Loretta Lynn from the outgoing gregarious person described in her
autobiography into a withdrawn and brooding individual who observes rather
than participates. We get brief glimpses of community life, but the main
human interaction comes in close family scenes, where squeezed into small
dark rooms the family members find a comforting intimacy. When Loretta
marries and must follow her husband Doolittle to the state of Washington,
she recreates a warm family with her own children, but her success as a
singer disturbs family life. Loretta lives her life on the bus and in
dressing rooms while Doo and the children watch Loretta in the glow of the
television. The film ends with Doo and Loretta on a hill overlooking a
valley, arguing about the smaller home they will build. They hope to re¬
cover family togetherness on that hillside reminiscent of her childhood
home.

In HONEYSUCKLE ROSE, Buck Bonham experiences the conflict of family and
career in its most cliched form— sexual fidelity. Buck too is a loner. In
the first scene we see him alone in a field at sunrise practicing his golf
swing. The cool, laid-back style of Willie Nelson gives Buck a warm but
aloof and controlling presence. Buck's life oscillates between the party
with the band on the road and the party with his wife and child at home.

The erotic family ice-cream fights and his playful loving attention do not
stop Buck's wife, Viv, from questioning his sexual fidelity. Then Buck's
best friend and fellow band member. Garland, quits the road to remain at
home. Garland's daughter, Lily, takes his place as guitarist for the band,
and the romance between her and Buck takes place on- and off-stage. Unex¬
pectedly, Viv arrives at a concert to announce from the stage that she is
divorcing Buck. In the final scene, he returns to Viv and from a stage
they sing a duet about their mutual love.

The conflict of family versus career is more polarized in THE NIGHT THE
LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA as brother and sister Travis and Amanda choose
different directions. The two are detained in a small town on their way to
Nashville and must choose between the friendship and love they find there
and the lure of Nashville. We first see Travis running from a motel room
pursued by an irate father; Amanda whizzes by in a truck to rescue him for
their next engagement. When the irresponsible Travis is arrested, the
practical Amanda finds a roadhouse owner, Andy, who will pay Travis's fine
in exchange for work in his bar. When the fine is worked off Amanda pre¬
pares to leave town, but in a moving sene Travis says he'll remain with
Melody, the woman he loves. Amanda replies that she would not give up her
singing career even to be with her lover Conrad. In a too-simple plot res¬
olution, the jealous police chief kills Travis; as Amanda drives out of

Performers' social isolation, pain, and irrational compulsion is shown as
bearable because they have pleasurable and supportive relationships created
through shared interests and work. In these films, people who work togeth¬
er have more interests in common than do spouses. Pleasures in work rela¬
tionships pose the real threat to family. Early in Lynn's career, she and
singer Patsy Cline became friends, exchanging gifts, personal problems, and
professional insights. This friendship threatens Lynn's marital bond, as
we see in one violent scene when Loretta chooses to wear makeup following
Patsy's suggestion in defiance of Doo's wishes. Buck seems more disturbfed
by Garland's decision to leave the road than by his wife's pleas; when he
does have a romance it is with a woman who shares his musical and road
life. Travis and Amanda have a cooperative and affectionate relationship,
writing together and caring for each other; as brother and sister fellow
performers, they even watch out for each other's sex lives. These noncom¬
petitive, close friendships finally must give way to the family— Cline
dies. Garland leaves, and Travis chooses the woman he loves over Amanda—
but these relations still seem the most troublefree and loving, drawing
performers into meaningful relations outside the nuclear family.

Caught between family and career, wavering and uncertain, the performers
are not the real "heros." Their confusion is contrasted with those who
choose the ordinary life, the humble ones who do not feel a continual need
to distinguish themselves, who give unselfishly, and who find satisfaction
in family and community. The performers are flawed and weak, requiring
drugs, sex, adulation, but most importantly the presence of these strong
supportive people. Lynn's father, Bonham's sidekick who gives up the road,
and Travis Child are admirable. Both Doolittle and the patrolman who fol¬
lows Amanda are so independent that they can act outside of masculine v-
alues and stick by their women. Buck's wife's love is stronger than her
pride. These friends and family members have no resentment or ambition in
their support. Their success lies in rejecting social norms of success and
in finding contentment backstage. That the performers continue to need
them gives these characters a moral superiority and attractiveness that
competes with the performer's appeal.

This same contrast between the striver and the individual satisfied with
what s/he has— success versus family— has been a popular theme within coun¬
try music. And, as in the films, the content individual is portrayed as
more valuable. But country music has developed this conflict within a
working-class context and has carried with it a more subversive social cri¬
tique. Usually country music articulates the tension between success and
the family as a tension between classes. Country music turns the social
structure upside down, contending the poor are the wealthiest. Thus work¬
ing people have wisdom, love, contentment, and community in Dolly Parton's
"Chicken Every Sunday" (1970) and Merle Haggard's "Okie From Muskogee"
(1969). According to country music, life is not only bearable within the
working class, it is superior to that within the middle class, where peo¬
ple— as Hank Williams, Jr., sings in "The American Way" (1980)— care only
about the dollar. Mobility brings material prosperity, but it also de¬
stroys family and community, resulting in spiritual poverty. Early in her
career Loretta Lynn sang "Success (Is Breaking Up Our Home)" (1962), and

LORETTA LYNN

JUMP CUT NO. 28

Jeanne Pruett warned women of the pitfalls of marrying for wealth in "Satin
Sheets" (1973). In "Two-Story House" (1980) George Jones and Taniny Wynette
tell of how they have accomplished their dreams but of the absence of love
amid their newly acquired material splendor. Love is destroyed by the
drive for wealth, not poverty. Often singers present the love of men and
women not just as individual but as an affirmation of mutual class identi¬
ty, as in Melba Montgomery's and Charlie Louvin's song of mutual praise,
"Something to Brag About" (1970). In choosing to love others who like
themselves are poor and obscure, men and women express a family solidarity
that simultaneously expresses personal love and class allegiance. In coun¬
try music, personal experiences are closely tied to class realities and the
conflict of success versus family conforms to class oppositions that domi¬
nate working people's lives.

The picture of working-class life that generally emerges in country music
does not stand as a documentary description of working-class experience,
but like all culture, as a constructed image which fulfills many of the
needs and aspirations of those who make and consume that culture. Country
music has provided an arena in which a defensive working-class ideology has
been created, preserved, and developed. The music challenges images of the
working class created elsewhere. It opposes to the definition of the poor
as financially and morally bankrupt an identity with integrity and dignity.
It does not encourage people to blame themselves for their hard times but
to find virtue within the experience. It does not advance individual mo¬
bility as a personal solution, for it exposes the undesirable aspects of
middle-class life. It encourages people to focus on the quality of life
and to oppose the ethos of production and materialism. It presents the
working-class way of life as a choice and invests that choice with moral
superiority. It offers cultural resistance to widespread images that are
destructive individually and collectively.

It is no accident that two of these three films about country performers
are about women, for women have taken a particularly important role here in
expressing working-class sentiment. Loretta Lynn does not just add a wo¬
man's voice to country music but offers a voice for all working people. As
working-class women have used country music to find their own purpose and
identity, they have used the image of an egalitarian community to express
their need for equality. As women they can more sharply express aspira¬
tions to personal autonomy and also more freely voice the desire for commu¬
nity. Articulating their own needs, women country performers give tradi¬
tional working-class aspirations new life.

When the defensive working-class ideology is taken out of a collective
context as in COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER, HONEYSUCKLE ROSE, and THE NIGHT THE
LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA and placed in the context of an individual con¬
flict between career and family, it loses much of its subversive power. It
is no longer part of the constant struggle of working people for self-defi¬
nition. It becomes a romantic view of the family and individual creative
work that reinforces the status quo or a pessimistic view of the eternal
nature of problems that makes protest futile.

To do justice to the lives and culture of working people these films
would have to portray a much more subversive and threatening reality. THE
NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA comes closest to showing working-class
life as one in which working people are conscious of themselves as a group
and have resources for taking their own initiative and creating alterna¬
tives. The one-room school in COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER and the celebration in
HONEYSUCKLE ROSE are older and disappearing ways of collective life that
are distant from the lives of most working people. The roadhouse in THE
NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA is similar to the neighborhood bars of
small towns and large cities where people with similar experiences gather
for shared leisure. Although Travis and Amanda are orphans and seem less
socially rooted than Loretta Lynn or Buck Bonham, they actually become more
rooted as they are integrated into this roadhouse community. Not yet suc¬
cessful, they are not very distinct from their audience. When performing,
they are not just individuals expressing their pain but a core around which
a group is formed. The music provides an arena of self-discovery and soli¬
darity with a group where individuals find themselves and each other. The
freedom in the expression of strong emotions is not a lonely experience, it
is mutual pleasure. The friendship-work groups seen in 9 TO 5 and TAKE
THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT are absent, but this community-in-leisure gives some
indication of the possibilities of collective life beyond the family. _ It
shows part of the ground that is necessary for other struggles and for’ the
generation of new forms of living and new visions.

Although these films do not portray the full extent of discontent and
creativity among working people, they do use country performers to express

the dissatisfaction in the family and work shared by middle- and working-
class people. Although people in different classes experience work and
family life differently, family and work are images and symbols used across
classes in much the same way. They can be used as specific terms, but they
are also ambiguous ideas which in contrast to each other represent broad
desires and dissatisfactions. The family, particularly the male-female
couple, bears the burden of standing as a symbol for the desire for human
relations, as ^opposed to work relations where competition, production, and
economic interests dominate. Although people in any class seldom experi¬
ence the family as ideal, it continues to be a general way of talking about
loving relations in units as small as the couple or as large as the world.
Work experience also varies between classes, and the films' use of a coun¬
try performer, a person with experience of both classes, to confront the
middle-class dilemma of family versus career is only one indication of deep
middle-class discontent. The critique of middle-class life from a person
with working-class origins who has known poverty and menial labor seems the
most powerful of all.

The use of working people and country performers to articulate middle-
class needs and discontent distorts the lives of working people, but it
also reveals the potential of working people as a source of universal crit¬
icism and vision. Because COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER, HONEYSUCKLE ROSE, and THE
NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA represent only a small part of a dia¬
logue about working people, they only point to real-life conditions which
generate discontent, aspirations, and creative attempts to find new solu¬
tions. Although in these films the working-class story becomes dominated
by a middle-class problem, the films reinforce an image of working people
as able to act as their own agents as well as the agents of others. The
greatest potential in these films is that they lead viewers back to the
music, to the lives of country performers, and to the experiences of work¬
ing people where the denied reality can be recovered. B

The Mammy in Hollywood Film

I’d Walk a Million Mil
For One of O Her Smii

barrenness neutralized any latent power residing -
in her capacity for biological motherhood.^

Her character traits, which ranged from un-
questioningly loyal to warmly irascible, became
fixed by the powerful performances of the women
who played her. Whether it was the exceedingly
faithful Louise Beavers in John Stahl's IMITATION
OF LIFE, or the memorably contentious Hattie Me
Daniel in GONE WITH THE WIND, the Mammy image
reflected the opposite of the myth of social
mobility for blacks. As presented in Hollywood
films, her image persists as a unique one of
apparent strength for both blacks and women. 5
Yet if we look more closely at the structures in
which this apparent strength is "allowed" by
white culture--both in the larger social myth
and in Hollywood cinema— we can see the limita¬
tions of the Mammy image and understand why this
particular depiction of black power has remained
largely unattacked by whites.

Inexorably linked to either the slave-society
image of surrogate maternal ism and domestic ser¬
vice (in the rearing and socialization of white
children), or to the pernicious myth of black
matriarchy (in the sole parenting of the frac¬
tured, father-absent black f ami ly ) ,*’ the Mammy
has persisted as one of the few recurring images
of black women on the screen. The strength of
the stereotype has been greatly reinforced by
the powerful iconography of her physical image,
the recognizable character traits, the customary
positions of socio-economic dependency, and the
consistently reappearing personae of such fami¬
liar black actresses as Hattie McDaniel and
Louise Beavers.

Iconographically, the Mammy has usually ap¬
peared as the dark-skinned Aunt Jemima whose
physical largess seemed capable of enfolding a
substantial portion of white Southern society's
children in her loving, maternal arms. The
enormity of her size, while potentially increas¬
ing the image of her maternal strength, presented
a de-sexualized image, especially contrasted with
those sylphlike, objectified others of her gender
who exemplified the feminine ideal. Such de-
sexualization became further substantiated by
the almost total non-existence of her own child¬
ren, husband or lover; this familial isolation
served to present the Manmy as a character who
had, in effect, been spayed, and whose apparent

—Sybil DelGaudio

There are two kinds of females in this coun-
' try— colored women and white ladies.

Colored women are maids, cooks, taxi driv¬
ers, crossing guards, schoolteachers, wel¬
fare recipients, bar maids, and the only
time they become ladies is when they are
cleaning ladies.l

According to political scientist Mae C. King,
every political system has its myths. 2 These
myths usefully justify the dominant principles
of the society in which they were created. In
the case of U.S. society, the dominant principle
has been the caste system, a hierarchy of privi¬
leges and restrictions based largely on race.

In both social mythology and in its reflection
in U.S. cinema, white male power has been assis¬
ted by the maintenance of black female stereo¬
types. As King suggests, the caste system
freezes the levels of status, opportunity, and
privilege in a society. It does this by ascrib¬
ing inherited physical and mental characteristics
to various castes and maintaining their positions
with whatever injustices and power iniquities
have placed them there. 3 One way in which Holly¬
wood cinema, our medium of social reaffirmation,
has successfully reinforced the social hierarchy
maintained by the U.S. caste system is in its
presentation of the image of the Mammy.

In reality, in the South the Mariii^y was an im¬
portant figure in the socialization of white
Southern children and the person to whom they
often turned for affection and security. She
was primarily concerned with the care of the
children, relieving the mistress of the house of
much of the difficult work connected with such
care.o

Butterfly MoQueen as Prissy in GONE WITH THE
WIND.

The black Mattmy, referred to as such to dis¬
tinguish her from natural mothers of black child¬
ren, v/as so closely associated with members of
the white family that she has often been linked
more closely with members of the white group than
with members of her own race. According to Eu¬
gene Genovese, the slaves in the Big House had
an advantageous position, and a reciprocal child
care agreement existed between Mamnies and white
women. 7 But what of her own children? Evidence
of Mamr.iy's own children is reflected by her fa¬
cility as a wet nurse. However, because of her
enormous responsibility and devotion to white
children, some black observers have accused the
Mammy of neglecting her own in favor of those
white children. W.E.B. DuBois described her as
"one of the world's Christs. . .she was an embodied
Sorrow, an anomaly crucified on the cross of her
own neglected children for the sake of the child¬
ren who bought and sold her as they bought and
sold cattle. "8

Actually, this idea is more accurately an out¬
growth of the myth that surrounds the Mammy, a
myth that arose out of a desire to create, not
only the faithful soul, but also the supremely
sacrificial slave. Thus, the characteristics
attributed to the Matmiy have become "standardized
and institutionalized by sentiment," and have to
do with her caretaker role for the whites' child¬
ren. Her "virtues" were generally denied to
other slave women, and she has been variously
described as:

self-respecting, independent, loyal, for¬
ward, gentle, captious, affectionate, true,
strong, just, warm-hearted, popular, fear¬
less, brave, good, pious, capable, thrifty,
proud, regal, courageous, superior, skill¬
ful, tender, queenly, dignified, neat,
quick, competent, possessed with a quick
temper, trustworthy, faithful, patient,
tyrannical, sensible, discreet, efficient,
careful, harsh, devoted, truthful, neither
apish nor servile. 9

Such extreme mythologized eulogies to black
maternal ism suggest that it may have been a
white male fear of white Southern women's power
which caused the transferring of maternal author¬
ity from white mothers to black surrogates in
Southern plantation society. With that re-loca¬
tion, white patriarchal mythology has created
the Black Mar.iTiy--powerful and strong, maternal
and proud— yet distinctly under the control of
paternalistic slave society. 10

The maintenance of the Mamroy myth affected
not only white Southern womanhood, but black
Southern manhood as well. The idea of the strong
black matriarch has aroused controversy since
the publication of Daniel Patrick Hoynihan's de¬
nigrating report on black matriarchy. According
to Robert Staples, the notion of black matri¬
archy carries with it connotations of power and
dominance that belie black women's oppressed
status, from their original condition in the U.S.
as chattel to their continued low status as the
doubly oppressed today, both as blacks and as
women. To burden the "matriarch" with other ac¬
cusations, such as robbing the black man of his
manhood, serves to foster the kinds of antagon¬
isms in the black community that perpetuate the
continued exploitation of the oppressed group,
maintaining suspicion and divisiveness among its
members. n

It seems clear that the creation and mainten¬
ance of the Manny in Southern plantation society
served a dual purpose: to remove any trace of
power from white Southern women, and to contri¬
bute to the maintenance of a divisive family
structure in which black males would have little
or no power. As Angela Davis suggests, the
slave systetn could not afford to acknowledge any
symbols of authority, whether male or female, so
the recognition of a matriarchal family struc¬
ture seemed antithetical to attempts to elimin¬
ate any source of power which might eventually
turn against the slave system. 12 The removal of
the flammy figure from her own family unit, and

her re-location as surrogate mother in the Big

•*

House neutralized her own power and effectively
killed two mother hens with one stone.

Eldridge Cleaver, in Soul on loe, offered a
contemporary analysis of sexual, racial and
power relations in U.S. society:

The myth of the strong black woman is the
other side of the coin of the myth of the
beautiful dumb blonde. The white man
turned the white woman into a weak-minded,
weak-bodied, delicate freak, a sexpot, and
placed her on a pedestal; he turned the
black woman into a strong, self-reliant
Amazon and deposited her in his kitchen—
that's the secret of Aunt Jemima's bandanna.
The white man turned himself into the Om¬
nipotent Administrator and established him¬
self in the Front Office. And he turned the
black man into the Supermasculine Menial and
kicked him out into the fields. 13

All these myths, equally applicable to Holly¬
wood films, suggest the persistence of images
which have maintained power inequities between
men and women. But the Maniny image, which re¬
appeared so frequently in films, was one which
served as the hub of a mythical wheel whose vari¬
ous spokes commemorated slavery far beyond its
actual abolition and fostered myths of black
matriarchy and factious fantasies of denial and
assimilation that were destructive to potentially
secure family role-models.

Hollywood films presented two, essential, gar¬
den-variety Mammy images: that of the historical
Mammy of slave society, characterized by Hattie
McDaniel in GONE WITH THE WIND; and that of her
"liberated," domesticated sister, characterized
by McDaniel, Beavers and others as the maid,
servant, cook and faithful soul, supposedly eman¬
cipated from her antebellum entrapment by a more
equal positioning in the home of the white fam¬
ily. 15

In fact, the post-emancipation Mammy's domes¬
ticity does not differ markedly from that of her
slave sister. The Big House may have become the
big house, but entrance into the mainstream of
American society would surely not come through
the kitchen door. Historically, domestic ser¬
vice has forced Dlack women to play some of the
same roles they played during slavery. Often
those who did not sign economically constrictive
contracts to work in fields became domestic ser¬
vants, exploited by some of the familiar tech¬
niques of oppression and dependency. Slavery
was, after all, known as the domestic institu¬
tion. 15 As W.Lb. DuBois argued, "...(T)he
Negro will not approach freedom until this hate¬
ful badge of slavery and medievialism (i.e.,
domestic service) has been reduced to less than
ten percent. "17

Two of the most striking images of the domes¬
tic Manny, supposedly removed from the restric¬
tions of slave society, yet clearly reduplicat¬
ing its conditions, are those presented by the
two Hollywood versions of the Fannie Hurst novel.
Imitation of Life. Both in the perpetuation of
the nyth in John Stahl's 1934 version, and in
its questioning by Douglas Sirk in 1958, the
fiammy images and their filmic contexts serve to
encapsulate the myriad myths associated with the
Mammy figure, while their glaring contrasts pre¬
sent significant distinctions between the tragic
vision of Stahl's film and the ironic/critical
vision of Sirk's.

John Stahl's 1934 version of IMITATION OF
LIFE features Louise Beavers as Aunt Delilah, a
reissued Mammy who, though similar in stature to
McDaniel's slave, was less cantankerous and more
emotionally ingenuous than her GONE WITH THE WIND
counterpart. A large woman who went on force-
feed diets to increase her size and her market¬
ability as an actress, and who affected a South¬
ern accent to mask her LosAngeles upbringing,
Beavers literally studied and ate her way into
the stereotype. The enormity of her physique
became a physical manifestation of her charact¬
er's social conditions and her own type-casting.
If size is traditionally associated with
strength, then this "mountain of a woman," as
she is referred to in Stahl's film, subverts that
stereotype. Her size becomes a metaphor for her
own social immobility, in contrast to the svelte,
lithe and upwardly mobile Bea (Claudette Col¬
bert). Here also, the white mother is freed of
her maternal responsibilities by the black Mammy,
whose choices have been more rigidly circum¬
scribed by conditions associated with slavery.
Delilah even ensur^ her own domestic fixed posi¬
tion, adding to the myth of black self-sacrifice
by revealing her secret pancake recipe to her
employer, Bea, who uses it to create a success¬
ful business. She represents the perfect, faith¬
ful servant, unconcerned with her own success,
completely content with servility. And her
image, a smiling face crowned by a cook's hat,
reaches iconic proportions, as it becomes a trade
mark, stamped on boxes of flour and emblazoned on
neon signs which publicly proclaim her domestic¬
ity.

Throughout the film, Delilah refers to herself
as Hanmy, a term which inflames her light-skinned
daughter Peola (played by black actress, Fredi
Washington), who has been trying to "pass for
white." The retention of slave names, associa¬
tion with and responsibilities in the Big House
(and the house becomes bigger and filled with
more black servants as the pancake business
booms), and the presence of a mulatto child, a
biological reminder of the slaveholder's exercise
of power and property rights over black women,
who were raped at will by white slaveowners— all
these serve to recreate conditions which serve
as a mythic metaphor of slavery. Moreover, the

JUMP CUT NO. 28

film's presentation of an abridged, father-absent
black family highlights the myth of black matri¬
archy, leaving the unit more vulnerable to the
compound fractures of denial and desired assimi¬
lation. Peola's misguided values lead to her
ultimate tragedy of denial, and her mother dies
of a broken heart. However, the film signifi¬
cantly does not end with Delilah's funeral. In
a scene in which Bea prevents a parallel tragedy
through an act of personal sacrifice, 18 stahl
shifts the final emphasis from the resulting
tragedy to preventive action, from the larger
causal issues of society and race to more avoid¬
able problems of personal priority. The film
ultimately prefers the comfort of '30's optimism
to the agony of social reality.

Whereas parallels become signs of individual¬
ization and particularization in Stahl's film,
they become sources of irony and social conment-
ary in Douglas Sirk's 1958 version. In Sirk's
imitation of IMITATION is re-make another source
of Sirkian irony?), the Mammy image gets altered
in a sign of the film's general fade to white.
Here, the blacks are whiter and the whites are
blonder, as the slim, barely Southern Juanita
Moore plays the Mammy, while the sultry white
Susan Kohner plays her daughter. Even the names
have been de-Southernized, as Aunt Delilah be¬
comes Annie Johnson and Peola becomes Sara Jane.
With platinum-haired Lana Turner as Lora Mere¬
dith, altered here from pancake queen to aspir¬
ing actress, and Sandra Dee as her bouncy blonde
daughter, exemplifying American Pert, this film
deals more critically than did its predecessor
with the larger idea of assimilation. Sara Jane
wants to be white, but Sirk questions that ideal
through physical hyperbole. Since blondness is,
as Maureen Turim has suggested, a cultural fet¬
ish of a racist society, l9 then ultra-blonde
puts Sara Jane's ideal out of reach, making imi¬
tation at its extreme— i .e., assimilation— im¬
possible. Throughout the film, Sirk criticizes
the ideal, and this critique extends to question¬
ing in a broader way the false values of the so¬
ciety to which Sara Jane aspires.

As fake jewelry inundates the frame behind
the titles, a Johnny Mathis sound-alike (Earl
Grant) sings the title song, the lyrics of which
proclaim that "without love, we are merely liv¬
ing an imitation of life." These are Sirk's
first clues to the missing elements and fraud.

The world of false values is further highlighted
by Lora Meredith's escalating wardrobe (from her
opening babushka and calico to the $78,000 array
of gowns by Jean Louis) and Sara Jane's attempts
to mimic the material signs of success, in gar¬
ish, slinky sheaths which reek of bad taste.

Lora's world of professional values is emulated,
as well, by Sara Jane, who performs in tawdry
nightclubs, a mockery of Lora's counterfeit cul¬
ture, of Lora's world of false theatricality.

Both women fail to see themselves as they really
are. Sirk's use of mirrors highlights their mis¬
apprehension. While Lora sees an unselfish
mother, Sara Jane sees a "perfectly" white woman,
but maternal devotion remains as elusive for the
ambitious Lora as desired assimilation does for
the myopic Sara Jane.

The culmination of Sirk's irony and criticism
occurs in the film's final funeral scene. De¬
picting an exaggerated black ritual requested by
Annie, it is the one scene in which Annie is
placed in her own unique cultural context, de¬
tached from Lora. It suggests the existence of
a rich life outside the big house, a life which
. has been filled with loyal friends. (Earlier,

Lora expressed surprise at the existence of
Annie's separate life, a life she was always too
blind to ask about.) In filming the scene part¬
ly through frosted glass, a typical Sirkian dis¬
tancing device, Sirk suggests the difficulty of
understanding and grasping true happiness, and
he laments the potential death of a rich culture
threatened by misguided ideals. Sirk himself has
summarized the way this film dealt with racial
issues:

The picture is a piece of social criticism—
of both white and black. You can't escape
what you are. Now the Negroes are waking
up to black is beautiful. IMITATION OF
LIFE is a picture about the situation of
the blacks before the time of the slogan
"Black is beautiful." 20

While Sirk's own analysis of the film here indi¬
cates that the film's appeal was firmly rooted
in the past, he downplays the film's powerful
treatment of family relationships, particularly
those of mother and daughter, which remain pro¬
found and relevant today.

Except for a few instances, 21 the Mammy has
essentially disappeared from the screen since
Annie Johnson's death. The growth of black
pride created a new market for films made speci¬
fically for black audiences and a shrinking mar¬
ket for films which perpetuated rnyths no longer
acceptable to the increasing social conscious¬
ness of the '60s and '70s. Old stereotypes
served as glaring reminders to a society which
was experiencing upheaval, and their commercial¬
ism was threatened by a burgeoning black audi¬
ence, sensitized to relics of racist ideology.

For awhile in the '70s, the elimination of
old stereotypes encouraged the creation of new
personae by such performers as Pam Grier, Diana
Ross and Cicely Tyson. But iconographic altera¬
tion requires ideological commitment as well as
commercial impetus, and total elimination seems
easier to affect than risky redefinition. Black
women have all but disappeared from Hollywood
films (Pam Grier was recently relegated to a
minor role in FORT APACHE. THE BRONX, in which
she was reduced to a metaphor for the insidious-

JUMP CUT NO. 28

ly destructive forces of the ghetto). So what
we are not seeing on the screen today seems,
ironically, a cormercial manifestation of the
same myths of denial, assimilation and invisi¬
bility perpetuated by the Mariwy image with which
we were once so familiar.

1. Gerda Lerner, ed., Black Women in White
America (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 217

King, "The Politics of Sexual
Black Scholar y March/April 1973

Stereotypes

4. Several films, including Elia Kazan ’’s
PINKY (1949) and both Hollywood versions of
II1ITATI0N OF LIFE (1934 and 1958), presented the
Mammy with her own children. Both the Stahl
(1934) and Sirk (1958) variations on the Fannie
Hurst theme will be dealt with later.

5. Donald Bogle, in Toms, Coons, l4ulattoes.
Mammies and Bucks (New York: The Viking Press,
1973), contends that McDaniel and Beavers tran¬
scended the roles as written, giving a strength
to the image v;hich arose out of their own inter^
pretations of the roles.

6. Jessie W. Parkhurst, "The Role of the
Black Mammy in the Plantation Household," Journal
of Negro History, July 1938, pp. 351-352.

7. Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll
(New York: Random House, 1972), pp. 354-55.

8. W.E.B. DuBois, quoted in Genovese, p. 356.

9. Parkhurst, p. 352.

10. Angela Davis, in Women, Race and Class
(New York: Random House, 1981) suggests that
most black women did not even enjoy the ideologi¬
cal status traditionally associated with mother¬
hood. Since slave women were considered more as
breeders than as mothers, their value was
assessed in terms of their fertility, and their
maternal authority was effectively neutralized

by the constant threat of the sale of their
children (p. 7). The Mammy, on the other hand,
had her power neutralized by diffusion and sepa¬
ration, removing her from her own family and re¬
situating her in the Big House.

11. Robert Staples, "The Myth of the Black
Matriarchy," Black Scholar, January/February
1970, p. 8.

Hattie McDaniel with Vivien Leigh in GONE WITH THE WIND,

Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves," Black
Scholar, reprinted from 3, No. 4, December 1971,
in November/ December 1981, p. 4.

13. Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1968), p. 162.

14. See Bogle's survey of Mammy images in
Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks for
further examples.

Race and Class

13. Here Bea postpones her marriage to her
fiance, on whom Jessie has developed a serious
crush.

19. Maureen Turim, "Gentlemen Consume
Blondes," Wide Angle, 1, No. 1 (revised and
expanded), 1979, p. 58.

20. John Halliday, Sirk on Sirk (New York
The Viking Press), p. 130.

21. The reader is referred once again to
Bogle, pp. 194, ff.

15. Davis, Women, Race and Class

16. Davis, Women, Race and Class

17. W.E.B. DuBois, quoted in Davis, Women^

Reflections on the Black

Saturday Afternoons

ones rather tormented the little ones— no doubt
bad mommies and daddies getting what they de¬
served. In my case, the big creatures were also
my older brother (and some schoolyard bullies),
whom I always aspired to beat up. He often took
advantage of his five-year advantage and loved
to scare me: once he took me for a ride on the
handlebar of his bike; he drove me down a long,
steep hill--I was petrified. Once he took me to
a movie--initial ly I couldn't understand why he
wanted to— it was a 3-D movie about a magician.

I was really frightened when the eerie-looking
bats zoomed in on me; I could almost feel the
cobwebs in my face.

I also ate a lot of sugar, mostly in the form
of JuJuBees and Juicy Fruits. I'd suck and bite
and chew and then stick my fingers in my mouth
to get the pieces out of my teeth, etc. The
eating intensified with the action and was an
attempt to allay anxiety (I was an old-time
thumb sucker), but the sugar, in fact, had its
own course of action. When I got home, my moth¬
er, perceiving me to be in an odd mood, would
ask if everything was O.K. Like a good cowboy.
I'd look serious and say nothing about my feel¬
ings. "Nah, everything's O.K." Coming home,
getting off the various highs, was like the end
of a bad trip. But, of course, I couldn't stop
going; there was something too good about it,
all that excitement. As I think about it, these
early films were a kind of preteen sex--seeing
dangerous things, gun fights and fist fights and
chases and horses and big hats--and virtually no
women. The price of the excitement was psycho¬
logically somewhat high: I felt a lot of frus¬
trations and inhibitions as I left the movies
and squinted in the daylight of concrete Broad¬
way. I couldn't have a horse and was not likely
to be a cowboy; I did not like the sadisim of
the bad guys (though I had my sadistic urges); I
couldn't honestly identify with the heroes and
though I might wish I were one, I knew my skin¬
ny, unmuscled frame too well. That left me with
the victim roles, which was uncomfortably pas¬
sive— and not unlike being the viewer.

The next phase of movie going coincided with
teen-aged dating. I recall none of the films.
The movies became a space rather than an event.

I remember going to a drive-in on a double date
to see TWO WOMEN, but I did not see more than
the titles. When I had my license I went to the
drive-in alone with a girl named Nancy; we
didn't see anything either. The movies became a

the piece. I did not assign or read the stu¬
dents' histories with the idea of analyzing them
or writing about them, so I do not have many use¬
ful generalizations to offer as examples of a
thematic investigation. I was impressed by the
almost ritual nature of the students' early film
going— being dropped off and picked up, going
with friends, going with the family to a drive-
in, eating popcorn, etc. At the same time, I
was struck by individual responses--one student
reported being very upset to learn on the way to
her first movie that one was not supposed to
talk during the showing; she made her father
drive around the block at least three times
while she tried to make up her mind. The value
of reading all the histories was akin to reading
books like Studs Terkel's working or Robert and
Jane Coles's women of crisis: I was learning
about a dimension of cultural reality in an un¬
alienated way.

•Martin Gliserman

As much as anything the following personal
film history is an invitation to its readers to
write and share their own histories. By itself
this piece is rather naked. It needs to be put
in the context of many others where it can shed
most of its individuality and line up with the
themes and patterns of others. My fantasy is
that many readers will find the idea interesting
enough to respond by writing their own and that
the editors of jump cut will be persuaded to
publish their first book, entitled, perhaps,
"Saturday Afternoons."

By way of preface let me say a few things
about the purpose and value of such an enter¬
prise. Our individual experience of going to
the movies is at once personal, social, and po¬
litical. I would like to explore the personal
dimension of the audience's relationship to film
as one way of understanding some of the social
and political implications of that relation.

The value of writing one's own history and then
seeing it in the context of others is much like
other forms of consciousness raising. When per¬
sonal responses are seen from the perspective of
a larger group, the individual reaches a deeper
understanding and critical awareness of his/her
own experience. Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the
Oppressed (Herder and Herder: New York, 1972)
offers us a complete description and illustra¬
tion of the values and methods of this kind of
"thematic investigation." Basically, people
talk with. each other about their responses to a
shared cultural experience in order to grasp
both individual and collective history in an
unalienating way. As Freire puts it, one objec¬
tive is for "the Subject to recognize himself in
the object (the coded concrete existential situ¬
ation) and recognize the object as the situation
in which he finds himself, together with other
Subjects" (p. 96).

The original context of this history was a
course I developed. Psychology and Cinema. The
first assignment I asked students to do was a
film history (the directions for which are ap¬
pended). Since it was the first time I had
taught the course, I thought it best to do the
assignment in order to: learn something of my
own history, to have something to share with
students, to model "experiential" discourse and
validate its use in the learning process, and to
see what kinds of difficulties emerged in doing

I have been going to the movies since the age
of seven or eight. Most of my early ventures
were fraught with anxiety— I went to a lot of
westerns, not that I had much choice, where
fights and chases were the center of energy. I
worried a lot during these scenes. The films
generated visceral anxiety— tightness in the gut
and jaw, decreased blood flow to the extremi¬
ties. The action in the film poised me to fight
or flee, but there was no one to hit and nowhere
to run— I was stuck in my chair, paralytic and
clenched. The films must have resonated with my
primitive wishes, fears, and prohibitions— about
material goods, violence, revenge, getting
caught. The basic situation of the films was
that someone (bad guy) took something from some¬
one else (victim) and someone else again (good
guy, savior cowboy) tried to right the wrong.
Although the moral tale was played out as an
interpersonal conflict, I can see now that I
also "read" the conflict intrapsychically. It
was not only the bad guy out there but the bad
guy inside me whom I wanted to get caught and
punished.

It was usually on Saturday afternoons; we'd
take a bus up to Broadway (Revere, Massachu¬
setts). We? Kids from the neighborhood--"Hey,
Ma, Kenny and Gary and.Stewie are goin' to the
movies, canigotoohuh?" There was always some
cartoon violence and humor— little creatures
getting the best of big creatures after the big

JUMP CUT NO. 28

There are varieties of films I stay away from--
sex exploitation, kung-fu, etc. I look for di¬
rectors and actors I like; I'm interestsed in
what comes out of different countries— Japan,
Italy, Germany, France, South America. Film
broadens horizens by shrinking them; people are
people, conflicts are conflicts. I have seen a
number of sex films— DEEP THROAT, THROUGH THE
GREEN DOOR— but find that the excitement is con¬
traindicated by the self-consciousness one feels
(to say nothing of the politics); it is diffi¬
cult to make love after seeing them without
feeling that I'm making a movie rather than par¬
ticipating in a human event involving me and
someone else. What I like in a film is earned
excitement— fear, anguish, sexual arousal— as
opposed to cheap thrills. I like buildup, slow,
ironic, digressive. I enjoy nonstop comedy,
too, slapstick, racy— I laughed a lot at UP IN
SMOKE. And certainly when I was single. Woody
Allen became an ever-present and benign alter
ego, always ready with a smile.

Movies are a form of news, too. They tell me
what kinds of social forces and feelings are
around or are being exploited. They define an
atmosphere, an attitude, a set of moods. I got
a cable channel (The Movie Channel) so I could
catch things I wouldn't be likely to see (as
well as to see things again), just to keep up
with the news. It's fun to see directors steal¬
ing ideas from others and doing a lousy job for
a cheap thrill--e.g., the number of "scary"
shower scenes . . . The contrasts give me more
appreciation. Watching movies at home, I often
shut off the sound so I can sharpen up my "tech¬
nical" eye.

One film that had an interesting impact on me
was Warhol's X-rated FRANKENSTEIN, a 3-D spoof
(which is now returning to the screen as an R-
rated film). It was so graphic— there was so
much bodily viscera making its way to about
three inches of my face— that I had to say,

"this is a movie; these are tricks." The film
gave me an experience that allowed me to see
that I was in a funhouse, and that gave me an
important kind of distance from the experience.

I tended to merge in movies (and elsewhere as
well); the ability to do so seems inportant—
i.e., to let oneself go— but it isn't the only
modality of relationship. Films still grip me—
THE NEEDLE'S EYE left me exhausted from anxiety
—but I feel free to choose.

Photo by Ro88 Care

Senate Theater , Harrisburg, PA.

films beyond a "boy, that was good" or "I really
liked that part where ..." I don't recall
making meaning so much as reliving the narra¬
tive. I did begin to understand that the movies
took me over; they invaded my sense of self,
changed my mood, made me want to act out and
redramatize the hero's attitudes. I did not go
deep enough into self-consciousness to under¬
stand its context. This would be a less than
truthful account if sexuality weren't mentioned.
Foreign films seemed much more advanced in re¬
gard to sexuality. There would often be a sexu¬
ally explicit scene--meaning, generally, that a
woman's breasts would be exposed to view. I
found this very exciting. When there was love
in these movies, it wasn't just mushy--it was
physical. My college experience made me into an
addict. The experience was surrounded by good
things--older people who took me serious, being
with the woman I wanted to marry (and did), ex¬
posed to a vision of the world that gave me new
role models, aesthetic values, and sexual ex¬
citement. The overall concern of these films
seemed more psychological and existential than
those I had known earlier, and there was much
less violence. I did not comprehend the uni¬
verse they showed me, but I was learning how to
see.

place to grope, one of the few places of its
kind. There were endless kisses, but that's
about all.

Serious movie going started in college, where
I got involved through a friend, Paul Strong,
with a film club. New Directions. The club was
actually three faculty couples--Meaders, Wees,
and Robertsons— and a small handful of students.
The faculty arranged to get the films; the stu¬
dents helped make posters, hung them up, and
collected money ($.50) at the door. Afterwards,
we went to someone's house, drank beer, and
talked— renarrating and dramatizing favorite
scenes, with some discussion of cutting, acting,
and so forth. As much as anything, I enjoyed
being with these faculty people--in fact, I'm
still good friends with some of them. It made
me feel older to be with them, and they were
like a family to me. The films were mostly for¬
eign— Fellini, Godard, Bergman, Kurosawa--and
experimental were shown as shorts--Baillie,
Brakhage, Header. The foreign films appealed to
me a lot. I liked seeing people on screen with
whom I could identify more--I 'wasn't a cowboy, I
wore glasses; I wasn't all-American, I am thor¬
oughly Russian Jew (assimilated, but . . .). In
foreign films people have noses that seem closer
to my own; they make gestures I feel akin to;
they are not typically beautiful but seem more
ordinary. I liked the styles of clothes and
housing. Everyone wasn't rich. My appreciation
was also a way of rejecting the fraternity
scene, the American way, my "boring" middle-
class family, the bourgeois roots that were
spreading. It was, as well, a form of snobbery,
for I often failed to understand the films
though I might pretend otherwise. I was trying
these films on--Marty Belmondo, Sven Gliserman.
It was often the music of the movie that grabbed
me and, as I see in retrospect, misled me--I
think of SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER or JULIET OF
THE SPIRITS.

Mhat do these recollections and responses add
up to? On one level going to the movies is per¬
sonal. I go to be meditatively engaged and yet
to be excited, aroused, satisfied, sobered. I
love to look, to see beauty, to see forms
change. I go to wrestle with my anxieties. The
movies are a kind of temple--away from daily
routine, into a different order of experience,
though one that reflects back onto daily routine
in some analogous way. I take them seriously,
but I feel their play. I go to exercise my
feelings and sharpen my "vision." After all, in
a lot of my daily work my feelings don't have
free reign; they have to be held back and trans-
formed--e.g. , I may feel angry with a student,
but it may not be pedagogical ly useful to deal
with that so it has to be suspended. Spontane¬
ous feeling often has to be checked out and
clarified by a more reflective part of the self.
The danger of this habit is that we might end up
forgetting our feelings altogether--we might
forget, for example, that driving on the Garden
State Parkway is dangerous, that the Lincoln
Tunnel is noxious, that the administration of
the academy does not care about teaching, that
the weapons trade is unconscionable. In the
movies the movement of my feelings is not ham¬
pered; letting them stretch in many directions
is simply healthy.

Going to the movies is usually a social event;

I go with others to get into something about
which I don't have to "do" anything, _to share a
cultural event with people I like. I like to
talk about the movies--to find out how we as
individuals saw the action, how we felt about
it, what it was that we did see, why we felt as
we did, and if we might change our sense of
things. In talking about movies I learn about
other people (and myself through them). The
film is a pattern by means of which I make new
patterns with other people. Part of the change,
then, I can see, is that as a youngster I de¬
sired to act on or act out the drama of the
film, but as an adult I want to talk about it—
that where the film was a private and anxious
experience, it has become an interpersonal,
shared, and facilitating experience. Writing
about film going, as in this remembrance, widens
the experience one irore rung— with the hope of
pushing the psychological (private politics)
toward the political (collective psychology).

All in all, this brief remembrance would serve
best when washed in the pool of other responses
--so please write one.

In graduate school there was little money and
less time; we didn't have a television and
Bloomington didn't bring many interesting new
films to the Von Lee cinema. There were film
series which allowed us to see some classics,
but we were pressed for time. I recall walking
out of BONNIE AND CLYDE because of its violence;
there was a man in the Dack_ of the theater yell¬
ing, "Viet Nam, it's fuckin'' Viet Nam." Once we
got to New Jersey, we went to New York and saw
many new films as they opened- -this had its
"status," of course, like reading the latest
John Barth novel or whatever. New York is full
of "first on the block" experiences or "one of a
kind" experiences, and when we came "back East"
we were hungry for these bourgeois treats. LAST
TANGO IN PARIS was one of those "first-run"
films. I felt speechless after seeing it; there
were many disturbinhg scenes and issues in it--
sexual, death struggles, madness, and loss. It
was one of the last films I saw with my wife,
who died in 1973. Seeing the film again, alone,
and knowing more about death, the film gave me
some perspective on my own pain and confusion,
lust and anger.

Being "single," I pushed myself to go to the
movies alone. It wasn't quite as much fun, but
in the city it did not feel strange because many
people do it. The movies became a place to go
with "dates"--they gave us something to talk
about, provided an experience to work on. I
know that I measured people by the postfilm
talks we'd have. And I measured films by how
often they became a point of reference. I have
recently been married again, so I've been going
to films with the same person for several years;
this is something wonderful since films provide
a thematic reference; they enrich our lives.

I like to see many kinds of movies, but some I
deeply enjoy--those which resonate with my val¬
ues in some way: I think of CHINATOWN, BREAKER
MORANT, MAX HAVELAAR, and THE CHINA SYNDROME. I
would have to say that I enjoyed seeing SUPER¬
MAN; it is a fun fantasy and one that brings
back an "old-tiirie" set of recollections. I
cried, laughed, held my breath, caught a glimpse
of Lois Lane through her flimsy dress. But it's
like a hot fudge sundae; I couldn't live off it.
Kukrosawa's KAGEMUSHA, on the other hand, I
found deeply satisfying. The. genre--a samurai
drama--is not one I'd pick as a favorite. But
the film was beautiful and rich— I'd see it
again (I've seen it four times) to look at the
kimonos and the gestures, to hear the voices.

I have since that time seen many of the films
again and I realize how little I grasped. I
don't recall talking about hnw I felt about the

m A COUNTRY JOURNAL ®
fOR GAY MEN EVERYWHERE

Appendix: assignment— a personal history of
movie going. This paper on your personal his¬
tory will establish some of the basic motiva¬
tions for, and the personal-social context of,
going to the movies. The following questions
are primers for developing the history. Why do
you go to the movies? (Keep asking this ques¬
tion to find answers on various levels.) What
do you recall about your earliest experiences at
the movies (with whom? when? about what?)? With
whom do you often go to the movies? How come
you enjoy going to the movies? What do you ex¬
pect from a movie? What do you want? What do
you most enjoy seeing, looking at, in movies?
What do you least enjoy? What might prompt you
to go to a given movie? Do you have a particu¬
larly favorite film? Can you explore why the
film has power for you? H

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JUMP CUT NO. 28

INTERVIEW WITH PANCHO ADRIENZEN

RADICAL FILM
PERU TODAY

—Buzz Alexander

Pancho Adrienzen is a Peruvian free-lance photographer, film critic for the
prominent leftist weekly Marka, and co-editor of the film magazine, Cinema-
tbgrafo. He has made video tapes on the history of Peruvian working class
struggle and on the fifth national congress of the Peasant Confederation of
Peru in 1978. His films include two shorts which have been shown national¬
ly, CORREO CENTRAL (CENTRAL POST OFFICE, a film about the importance of
correspondence as a form of communication, in which a hidden camera ob¬
serves tourists, peasants, students and others in the post office; and let¬
ters by Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Gramsci, and Simon Bolivar are part of
the commentary); and DANIEL CARRION (a Peruvian doctor who discovered the
innoculation for smallpox). The interview was carried out on two occasions
in 1979, in May by Buzz Alexander and in December by Chuck Kleinhans and
Julia Lesage. Buzz transcribed, translated, and edited the interview, in
consultation with Chuck and Julia.

NOTE ON PERU IN THE 1970s

In October 1968, President Fernando Belaunde Terry was ousted in a mili¬
tary coup and succeeded by General Juan Velasco Alvarado. Velasco's govern¬
ment was one of contradictions— combining nationalizations; recognition of
Cuba; agrarian, educational, and labor reforms; Third Worldist rhetoric and
behavior; repression of the working class; and imposition of an enormous
foreign debt which led the country into a severe recession. The left was
split by these contradictions, with the Peruvian Communist Party and other
elements supporting the regime while others vehemently opposed it. In Au¬
gust 1975, General Francisco Morales Bermudez replaced Velasco and led the
country rightward. By 1977 the country had entered a depression and was
subjected to "stabilization" measures by the International Monetary Fund:
devaluation of the eoJ, a high rate of inflation, and harsh restriction of
wage increases. The period was marked by growing labor militancy, including
general strikes in 1978 and 1979; by the election of a constitutional assem¬
bly in 1978; and finally new elections in 1980, with Belaunde returning to
power. The left parties united temporarily, but tragically and irresponsibly
split just before the elections, and so fared very poorly.

JUMP CUT: Describe the formation of your group.

Pancho Adrienzen: We came together to project films. In 1970 repression
in the universities was very severe. The only way for students to organize
politically was through clubs where they could link cultural and political
work: film clubs, theater clubs, song clubs, and so on. Through the film
clubs we could help students grow in their political consciousness by showing
Cuban, Chinese, and Soviet films. But we always intended that our work reach
beyond the university. From the beginning we showed films three or four
times a week in unions and barriadas (poor communities circling Lima). We
never exhibited films just for the love of films but clearly understood the
political usefulness of such work.

Our film exhibition project originally started out from a mass-based,
neighborhood organizing project in a barriada. Showing films let us get
people together and carry out activities that would keep people thinking of
themselves as active social agents. The project let us, as a group, work
collectively. The films chosen served to highlight various social problems,
show other countries' realities, and demonstrate--in a small but very impor¬
tant way— that there is another kind of cinema. For people also have to
learn to look at commercial film with other eyes.

What was the political stance of your group?

Our vision of the world was Marxist, but we had members from different
political groups. We never privileged any international line or position.

We were in reality a broad political front. For all of us the fundamental
factor was that the epoch of President Velasco was a reformist epoch: there
would be no basic structural changes. Our effort was to help citizens of
the barriadas and workers to organize independently and not succumb to the
reformist propaganda of the government. It was this effort that united us
and motivated us to work, and it is an effort we have been carrying out for
almost ten years now. We want to use film as a weapon, as a way to forge
independent, popular organizing and people's coming to consciousness. Two
films which we have distributed a lot come closest to our way of thinking:
Eisenstein's OCTOBER and a Cuban film by Manuel -Octavio Gomez about the
literacy campaign, HISTORIA DE UNA BATALLA. The work in the university
above all helped us to form a core group of politically committed, techni¬
cally competent people. •

Have you changed your strategies aver the years?

Yes. Ill the beginning it was rather dispersed work, based on individual
initiative and good will. After a while we became more organized, forming
a group which took on responsibilities that obligated each of us to commit
ourselves to the plan of work. We had weekly meetings where we discussed
the political side of what had gone on, evaluated our activities, and plan¬
ned new projects. Sometimes we even met two or three times a week— almost
continuously. Many of us also became interested in aspects of production,
in taking photographs and trying some filming.

There was another development. At first a union would invite us to show
a film for its anniversary or because it needed to raise funds or for some
other reason. But we soon became dissatisfied with this process: we would
show a film, a lot of people would come, there would be a political discus¬
sion about film, then people would go home. There was no follow through,
and the unions did not get a lot of support because the whole thing was very
sporadic and did not lead to any constant progression in the political con¬
sciousness of the working class. So we decided that every time a union in¬
vited us, we would commit them to a cycle of four or six films, shown in the
same location and with a certain political rationale. For example, we could
project a series on countries that had suffered repression, or countries
that had struggled for liberation: Vietnam, China, Cuba, the Soviet Union.

We also learned from this experience to apply the same policy in the bar¬
riadas.

We learned at *the same time to hold preliminary discussions with union
and community leaders so that they would understand the importance of each
film. Thus they were the ones who always presented the films and led the
discussions. This is how we collaborated in the organizing of unions.

From 1970 to 1973-1974, a great number of unions were formed in Peru, class¬
conscious unions, and with these film projections we assisted in organizing
those unions.

Did you work with any particular political organization?

Sahjmino Huilica, indigenous peasant union organizer, and Aporcia Masias, peasant
acting the protagonist, are both illiterate and both improvised their lines for Federico
Garcia's KUNTUR WACHANA (WHERE THE CONDORS ARE BORN). Huilica appears
in the Bolivian feature-length fictional film, THE PRINCIPAL ENEMY (Dir. Ukumau
Group) and a surpressed Peruvian documentary about his career as an organizer,
RUNAN CAYCU (Dir. Nora Izque).

We have worked with all the political organizations on the l§ft: organiza¬
tions opposed to right parties such as APRA and Accion Popular or SINAMOS
(Sistema Nacional de Apoyo a' la Movilizacio'n Social--the government's branch
intended to organize peasant collectives and other local units). And we
have refused to work in places where left organizations were in conflict.

We were once asked to show a film in a place where two groups were con¬
tending for control in very competitive, partisan terms, with a political
line very distanced from popular reality and not thinking of what was best
for the people at all. So, we did not go. Our purpose is to support the
development of leftist organizations in sectors where there is class con¬
sciousness of a struggle against the organizations of the right and of the
government.

Were there differences in your work in the unions and in the barriadas?

Yes, we showed different kinds of films and varied the manner of presen¬
tation. A very political, very revolutionary film, like Eisenstein's OCTO¬
BER, had impressive success in the unions. I recall that during times of
conflict, of miners' strikes, people responded to OCTOBER as if it showed
them the road. Such showings really made a great impression on me. They
were euphoric. People would come out like. ...well, if a soldier or a police
car had passed by just then, they could have burned it! But films like
0CT0BER,which implied a certain political development in the viewer, would
not produce the same effect in barriadas or peasant communities. So for
them we turned to films with mainly social content, like Bunuel's LOS
OLVIDADOS. We would take films borrowed from embassies, the French or Czech
embassy, for example. Or Cuban films, like Tomas Gutierrez Aleas THE TWELVE
CHAIRS, not political, but rich in social content. We used Chaplin often;
his films permit a lot of social commentary and attract a large crowd. We'd
begin with such films in a series and end with others that elicited a more
strictly political discussion.

Describe if you can a discussion resulting from one of these showings.

How would people discuss a Chaplin film?

We'd often begin with comparisons. Compare, for example, the Chaplin film
with contemporary feature films or television soap operas. Different kinds
of plots favor different kinds of characterizations. In many of his films
Charlie Chaplin plays a vagabond, a poor person, or someone dominated by
others— but his films also have a message of hopefulness. We want people to
be able to criticize mainstream cinema so as to create a public for alter¬
native, political cinema.

Sometimes we work through churches, who have the projection apparatus and
the locations, and who let organized groups, clubs, and associations run the
meetings.

Does the church support the left?

Institutionally, not so much, but pastors feel they have to. The state
clearly acts in a hostile way towards ordinary people, and the pastor either
has to be on the side of the state or on the side of the people. Sometimes
we block off a street to show a film, sometimes we put up a screen after
mass and the people stay after church. The churches have also been very
advanced in preparing filmstrips with cassette tapes and so have exhibition
facilities for those.

What kinds of repression have you faced and how have you dealt with it?

Well, we advertise these as cultural events, run by a local organization.
Right-wing parties and many religious groups have cultural events in the
barriadas, too. By working with established political groups, we have had
minimal public visibility, both personally and organizationally. This gave
us a lot of security, and gave our equipment and films protection too. And
if we would go into an area like the sierra, where there was a miner's
strike, and therefore severe police repression— including the thorough
searching of cars between cities or on the one road leading into town— we
would travel separately from the films and projector. But while we were
going to exhibit films to fishermen in the big national fishing industry
strike, the police confiscated one of our three projectors and before re¬
turning it, took off an arm, which we have never been able to replace. For
that reason, we will never travel with a projector again, only wUh films.

And for other reasons, too, we have decided to center our activities in
Lima and not disperse ourselves. For a while I was projecting films almost .
every day, often in two different places each Saturday and Sunday. It
caught up with me, and we can't let activism damage us like that.

Really our film showings have always been political, not aesthetic, events.
We show films to bring out issues, to increase leftist understanding, for

LOS PERROS HAMBRIENTOS
(THE HUNGRY DOGS)

Dir. Luis Figueroa

MUERTE AL AMANECER
(DEATH AT DAWN)

Dir. Francisco Lombardi

example, of workers in the middle of a unionizing drive. Our film showings
give support to the leftists working within the union; the film and the dis¬
cussion after it increase rank and file consciousness about left politics or
a left political analysis. This is one of the reasons why we always have a
preview screening and a mini -discussion beforehand with the group's leaders
and then have that group present the film to its own people--a double process
of cinematic and political education.

Our main political goal is to increase political awareness and class con¬
sciousness among ordinary people, for it is only education and pressure from
the base that will force unity on the left and keep the left parties from
just fighting among themselves. When there was a Constitutional Assembly,
the over thirty left parties that have sprung up since the Velasco era did
not consult with their popular base on proposals for the Constitution, not
even with the base of their own party; the left parties were heavily criti¬
cized by the masses for that, and many of them seem to be responding more
to the people's demands.

One of our members belonged to a left party, but when he went around
projecting films to every workers' organization and left organized commu¬
nity project in Lima, he saw the limits of his own group. Econoii(ic changes
in Peru have been so drastic and left parties have been so backward in
keeping up with these changes, that just opening your eyes and talking con¬
stantly to people is an important step. It lets you get information and see
what the situation is. This is why our group has always basically been a
communications group.

In the barriadas, how many would come for the projections and how many
would remain for the discussions?

We average 150 to 200 persons, because in the barriada people love film,
and because the films we show are very cheap, five to ten cents, and some¬
times we don't charge. When we do charge, it's just enough to pay for our
taxi or for someone to carry the projector, and to have a little fund to buy
a new bulb for the projector and so on. We get some support from friends
to repair the films and help with costs. This does not help us get ahead
with our own film work, but our purpose is to take the films to people at
an affordable rate.

About half the crowd will stay on for the discussion. Usually a very
small percentage of the people speak; you find the same fear as in the
university cinema clubs, the fear of not being a cinema specialist and
therefore not knowing enough to contribute. Where there is broad politi¬
cal development in a zone, then there is greater participation, because
people see the connection of the film to their collective work.

Sometimes, people don't meet our expectations in reacting to a film.

We showed LUCIA (Humberto Solas, Cuba 1968) quite a bit in 1972 and 1973.
We expected people to like the third episode best, but they liked the
second, because there was more action; regrettably many of them would
praise the husband for dominating his wife in the third episode. With
MANUELA (Solas, 1966) they would be enamored of the action and romance and
little more.

In the unions, it was different. Participation was much greater, because
the workers have political preoccupations and well-formed opinions. And
they would focus on class struggle itself, the nature of armed struggle,
say, in LUCIA and MANUELA. Projecting films at their political meetings
usually results in their taking up distinct positions in the discussion
afterward. Their debate is much richer.

THE POLITICS OF FILMMAKING IN PERU

You told us earlier that in 1975 there was a conjunction of very favor¬
able factors for the film movement in Peru. Could you tell us about that
period?

Yes, I'll need to give you a little background first on the Film Law
and censorship. Peruvian cinema as it is now began with the Film Law in
the early months of 1973. We had film before that, but no support for it;
you could not produce shorts, because there was no place they could be
exhibited. The new law stimulated the production of a great quantity of
shorts [by means of a tax rebate— trans. note]. But there is a problem.

Look at the films from the first year after the law. They are of three
types: auteur films, like those of Robles Godoy; films to make money, in¬
cluding industrial films; and EL CARGADOR (THE P0RTER--on a foot-carrier
of heavy loads in the Andes), a documentary study by Lucho Figueroa, a film
with a certain social interest, showing Peruvian reality. The vast majority
of the shorts then and since have been of the second type.

The problem for filmmakers like Figueroa was and is censorship. Censor¬
ship occurs in two stages in Peru. First the films are qualified for adults
or minors. The films then go to the Commission for Promotion of Film
(COPROCI) to receive authorization to exhibit, another form of censorship.

If a film passes the first censorship, but is denied authorization for
theater exhibition, it can still be shown in film clubs, unions, and schools,
Nora de Izcue's RUNAN CAYCU, for instance, a film about peasant struggles
leading up to The Agrarian Reform Law of 1969, did not pass ^he first stage
and so cannot be shown publicly under any circumstances. Nawi (Eye) Cine¬
matic Production's EL FOTdGRAFO DEL PARQUE (PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE PARK— a
documentary film on the itinerant salespeople, the food sellers, beggars,
and so on, who make up the reality of University Park in Lima), was passed
at the first stage but not at the second (until two years later).

So producers become frightened. They don't want to invest in films with
social themes. In spite of this, some filmmakers still insisted on making
films about social problems, but they were censored or denied the right to
exhibit. Examples are RUNAN CAYCU; Fico Garcia's HUANDO (a film about a

JUMP CUT NO. 28

strike by workers at the Hacienda "Huando") and TIERRA SIN PATRONES (LAND
WITHOUT LANDLORDS— a film documenting peasant struggles up to the Agrarian
Reform Law of 1969); the group Liberacion sin Rodeos' (Liberation without

Detours') UNA PELICULA SOBRE JAVIER HERAUD (A FILM, ABOUT JAVIER HERAUD— on
the Peruvian poet-guerrilla killed in 1963) and NINOS CUSCO (CHILDREN OF
CUSC0--a film about Andean peasant children).

This situation, which began in 1973, brought certain consequences in the
ideological and political terrain. Film people began to organize to protest
against the outrages of the state, against the censors, and against COPROCI.
The workers organized to combat the film companies; in 1974 they formed the
Union of Film Industry Workers (SITEIC). At the same time, the workers in
distribution and exhibition formed the Federation of Film Workers (FETCINE).
Simultaneously came the famous transference of the newspapers from private
and wealthy owners to the government, in July of 1974. Those of us who
wrote for the film magazines Hablemos de cine and Cinematbgrafo went to work
as critics for the newspapers. We had access to a medium that before had
been closed. This access, together with the organization of the film workers
and their conflict with the government and the industry, permitted us to
open a wide debate about Peruvian cinema. This debate lasted throughout
1975 and into the early months of 1976. Its fundamental issue was how to
give political content to Peruvian film.

What kind of problems did people in production have?

A fundamental problem was that their films were not approved by COPROCI.
They could not make the films they wanted to. Then there were labor problems
for those working for companies; low salaries, sporadic and infrequent work¬
ing hours, no right to work, no life security, and so on. People working in
distribution and exhibition are still very exploited. They do not have
stable work, and the government refuses to recognize their union.

The various production workers, the critics, and the actors' union reached
the point of uniting in a Front for the Defense of the National Cinema.

This Front entered into a lengthy discussion over how to take up the struggle
for a national cinema, a cine popular, a cinema which expressed the interests
of the majority. This discussion had a basic political and ideological pur¬
pose, the defense of freedom of expression.

It sounds good, but we in the Front had problems and committed serious
errors. For instance, there was infighting between groups of different
tendencies in the Front, and we failed to arrive at a correct political
direction. We identified two fundamental enemies: North American business
with its control of the film market; and the state, which being capitalistic
and bourgeois defends its interests through a castrating censorship which
cuts off all initiative and development.

If we understand correctly, this is part of a general national situation:
a state which subsidizes multinational companies and makes it very difficult
for native industry to develop on its own, a situation which creates unem¬
ployment and underemployment, at many levels.

Yes, it is the same. Our problem was that we had identified the enemies
to strike, but we had no consensus on whom to strike first. A related prob¬
lem was that we did not agree on our orientation. The film critics thought
we needed to develop an ideology for the movement before further developing
its politicization, although that should be happening simultaneously as
well. Others believed the opposite, and for them it was most important to
attack North American imperialism directly through the multinational com¬
panies. In addition, the movement did not actually advance much beyond
pure initial emotion, an emotion without perspective on the struggle.

But there was a strike at this time, wasn't there?

Yes, we carried out various actions. The FETCINE people had strikes
which received a decent amount of support. Juan Bullita and I on our
Sunday page in the Correo published two sections. One contained authen¬
tic Marxist film criticism plus commentary and news. In the other we
addressed problems in the cinema movement: we published the communi¬
cations of the unions and federations, we reported their struggles with
the censors. This we did from July of 1974 until November or December
of 1975. There were also projections of films, discussions of a polit¬
ical and ideological type, and marches and demonstrations by film people.

And production?

No. We lacked production for various reasons. First, film people's
political and ideological development was very weak, and continues to be
very weak. Second, in the vacuum of opportunity for our development, we
had few technical groups capable of producing political films. Those who
intended to make political film lacked resources and equipment. Third,
the left faced a series of discrepancies. The Revolutionary Vanguard and
the Revolutionary Communist Party, for example, did not agree at all. Red
Fatherland could not agree with the Revolutionary Left Movement. As a
result of this very marked sectarianism, the few people in film who wished
to make political film found little consistent support. It was difficult
to form crews. There were some experiences in super-8, but very limited
work at the bases, for one or another union. SITEIC turned out one num¬
ber of a newsreel, but that was all.

There were a few films. Nora de Izcue made RUNAN CAYCU (in 1973, but
the battle over whether it should be exhibited lasted into 1974-1975).
Liberacion sin Rodeos made a film on Javier Heraud, the guerrilla poet, an
honest but sentimental film without a real leftist point of view. The
group Liberacion sin Rodeos tried to make other films, including an inter¬
esting project on black slaves in Peru in the nineteenth century, but did
not finish them. Then there was Bruma Films, a group of Chileans and
Peruvians who came from Chile after the coup in 1973. They had a good
amount amount of political maturity and clarity. They made a rather im¬
portant film, TEATRO EN LA CALLE (STREET THEATER) in 1974 about the street
theater actor Jorge Acuna in Lima, and a film called VIA PUBLICA, about
the itinerant salespeople of Lima. They also made two other shorts, EN
CADENAS (MY CHAINS) about a barriada, and NECESITA MUCHACHA (MAID NEEDED),
about domestic employees. ,

So there wasn't much political production. And this limited our dis¬
cussion. It was also limited by the fact that we were mainly fighting for
democratic conditions within the systenfs structure of production and were
not planning alternate cinema at the system's margins.

Why this last limitation?

The main reason was the filmmakers' ideological weakness. The majority
of FETCINE who wanted to make films did not want to make a political com¬
mitment. So they might think of films that were slightly radical, but with¬
in the system. In short, they were not militants.

So what happened to the movement of 1974-1975?

Because of the debate over whom to strike first, because of the uncer¬
tainty whether to start with the ideological or political, and because of
the lack or accord between various sectors, including the industry and
critics, the government was able to carry out a very effective maneuver
in 1975. It created a comnission to compose a new general law for the
film industry, for production, distribution, exhibition, cinema clubs,
everything to do with film. It sent out a call to distributors, produ¬
cers, workers, actors, and critics to help plan the law. It tricked us:
the endeavor immobilized us. All of our forces were channeled Into this

JUMP CUT NO. 28

new law--we met every afternoon four or five times a week for six months,
piled up papers full of projects, and all for a law that never saw the
light of day, that the government never intended to enact.

At the same time, the union entered into a political struggle against
the company owners at a time when the union's forces were insufficient.

It went on strike and its members were fired. It also fought legally,
with a grievance to the Ministry of Labor, and it lost there too. The
government first recognized the union, then decided not to recognize it.
Part of the problem was that the union lacked clear political and ideo¬
logical preparation. There was too much infighting, and it is said that
Revolutionary Vanguard used the union for its own political ends. The
result was that the union entered a period of political crisis and dis¬
solved.

The critics also had contradictions that we still haven't resolved,
and these contradictions made it difficult for us to deal with the in¬
creasingly tougher newspaper censorship, in 1976, under the more rightist
government of General Morales. All of this added up, and the film move¬
ment failed. Most filmmakers now do not want anything to do with the
word union, because of the failure of this movement.

But for a year new there has been an Aasoaiation of FiVmakers. We
realize that it also was organized by the government, by COPROCI.

Yes, another trick, partly intended to be divisive. The original union
included film workers of all kinds, including independent workers, who work
part time or work by contract for small companies. Most of the workers in
the industry are independent workers. But there are also those called the
filmmakers: the qualified technicians, the directors, the producers, in
other words the petite bourgeoisie, well paid and considered above the
workers. Government functionaries utilized this division, wooing the bet¬
ter paid group with promises of greater production liberties and better
exhibition possibilities.

This brings us to July 1977, when COPROCI organized a seminar of film¬
makers, not workers, to evaluate Peruvian Cinema and to present a series of
proposals for new laws to the government. Somewhat wiser this time, a group
of left filmmakers and critics used the seminar for our own purposes. We
prepared our own proposals. For example, in the area of censorship we pro¬
posed that films from all countries be allowed to enter Peru, that COPROCI
not be a censorship body composed of technicians and functionaries of the
state, that it not have representatives from the armed forces, that it have
representatives from among the critics and film people. The entire series
of proposals had to do with democratic liberties. It was well planned,
very well organized, and our proposals carried the day. We also got an
agreement among the participants that the government had to respond in
sixty days to our accords. This was all very fine, but in fact the govern¬
ment complied with none of our proposals; the only one they complied with,
aside, from a minor concession, was creation of the Association of Film¬
makers.

And what kind of body is the Association? Do you belong?

No, I do not belong. It exists under the government. The people who
did form it have hopes that it will help build the Peruvian film industry.
For them, that means collaborating with COPROCI and avoiding political and
ideological discussion. They think that if they develop the industry, then
they will be able to make more progressive films.

I believe this is the government's game to demobilize film people, stifle
their politicization, and stop them from even beginning to make films with
progressive content. Films now are technically very professional yet have
no analysis of reality, no presentation of contradictions. Most of our
filmmakers are turning their backs on their country. The Association per¬
spective is mistaken. It means no ample debate over the possibilities and
realities of Peruvian cinema. For two years now--since the seminar--no one
has wanted to discuss anything about Peruvian cinema. If the Association's
notions prevail, they will always think political cinema lies somewhere in
the future. Yet political knowledge can only come through struggle.

In making films that reach the theaters for two, three, four years, when
the time comes to make political films about Peruvian reality, they will not
know how to do it.

Right! Last year, 1978, was a year never seen before in the history of
Peru, rich in popular struggles: the strike by SUTEP (the national teachers'
union), strikes by the miners, national campaigns for the Constitutional
Assembly, the land seizures. And the filmmakers were not present. A few of
us were there, but we lack the experience of those who have worked more con¬
sistently in film, and we do not have their economic resources.

A POLITICAL FILMMAKING PROJECT

What can you tell us about the film your friends are working on now?

It records the struggles of a barriada here in Lima, its effort to gain
political recognition and to prevent SINAMOS from interfering in its affairs.
The barriada was formed in 1974, and at the end of 1977 the residents under¬
took a redistribution of the zone. Let me explain. When land is first in¬
vaded on the outskirts of a cit>, everyone grabs their own piece of land.
Afterwards, when everything is more or less organized, then the space becomes
redistributed and shared according to the necessities of each person. This
took place in 1977 independently of the government, through the people's
good will. A friend who works and lives in that barriada contacted a friend
of mine and he went out to film the redistribution, because the people wanted
a record of how it was actually done. So, without any greater perspective,
he shot a little over a half hour, on how they organized the houses, how
they live, and a few other things like a small police tank arriving to ob¬
struct their work, some marches in the zone. But he had no precise idea of
what to do with the material. He financed this half-hour with the aid of
friends who gave him some outdated film still in good condition. And he had,
as is always the case, the backing of friends, film technicians who could
give him access to labs and equipment, and so on. After the filming, a
German group that had come to Peru contributed some money, so my friend and
his collaborators were able to make a positive answer print.

The next step was to show their material to the people of the barriada.
They wanted the residents' opinions, wanted to know from them what to do
with the material. They cut out the bad shots, put a certain order to it,
and made a more or less parallel sound track on cassette tape. They pro¬
jected it twice, first for the community leaders, about fifty people, and
then for the entire community. Technically, the material is not very good;
they did not have light meters, used hand-held camera, and so on. Biit this
was not important tc the audience. The film made a strong impression on
them, not only because of their excitement at seeing themselves on film,
but also because they saw a segment of their struggle. With high partici¬
pation and after considerable discussion, they asked from the filmmakers a
history of that barriada from start to present.

So they went forward, interviewing different sectors of the population
on how they organized to take the land. There is one twelve minute inter¬
view with a family who were involved in a confrontation with the police.

My friend also filmed more material on living conditions in the zone, more
interviews on present conditions and problems.

Significantly, in this struggle, the entire population participated and
it was a big battle—with people wounded, kidnapped, and killed.

What do they show of the struggle? How will they show it?

They were able to get photographs of a moment of the struggle, of one
very important struggle in particular, where during a strike three people,
including two children, were killed in a confrontation with the navy.

How are they going to render the struggle politically?

Politically, there are a number of factors. First, they make it clear
in the film that this barriada is typical; they show that the same conditi-
tions exist elsewhere in Peru. Second, they examine a particular popular
movement which is exemplary and inspiring. Third, they consider it impor¬
tant that the people who carried out the struggle have seen the film and
contributed to its form and content. Fourth, they show the state's econo¬
mic and political interest in having people continue to live under these
conditions and in insuring that barriadas do not organize independently
from the state, from SINAMOS. This is one of the few peasant-migration bar¬
riadas which won its battle against SINAMOS, which got construction money
on its own terms. And, fifth, in opposition to the state, they show the
break from SINAMOS*, they show the importance of the barriada 's being or¬
ganized independently and acting together to choose its own destiny. This
is more or less the film's central idea.

What stage is the film at now?

They have about two hundred feet more to film, some details, another
interview or so, and then the editing. They have sufficient financing now
to finish the film in the next half year. They are experiencing a little
difficulty in the barriada itself. As a result of the killings, the people
have withdrawn a little, and it has a new directorship. But they do not ex¬
pect this to hinder them much. In addition to the remaining filming, they
feel they need to undertake some self-criticism, both to improve their
editing of this film and for the sake of future projects.

KUNTUR WACHANA (WHERE THE CONDORS LIVE). Dir. Federico Garcia.

What do you anticipate will come out in the self-criticism?

For one thing, although two of them worked on the project with the sup¬
port of many others, they failed to put together a film crew which worked
consistently on this film and would be ready to make more films in the fu¬
ture. Also, they meant to have a more collective process in making the film,
but isolated themselves from people at the base. They did consult with
them about the general direction of the film, but did not work closely with
them; the filmmakers did not share the film and therefore the people did
not participate fully enough. The fault lies partly in failure to consoli¬
date a crew, partly in economic problems: my friend, for one, could not
afford to work on the film all the time that was necessary. Being aware
of this error, they will now consult with the people before beginning to
edit, so the people can make suggestions for improvement.

They face a third and related error. As a small group of filmmakers,
they failed to carry on political work in the barriada. They came and went;
they discussed the film in a limited sense, but were not a permanent pres¬
ence in the zone. If the filmmakers had at least been sharing the film
more, if the people had participated in its elaboration, then the people
would have been developing politically.

This last reminds us of the criticism progressives in the sierra make of
anthropologists who come to observe and write about the peasants', even with
sympathy and good intentions, who come and then go, but who give nothing,
who do not participate in an effort to develop political consciousness, both
their own and that of the peasants. In the worst of cases it is exploita¬
tive; in the best, as with your friend’s work, people genuinely intend
political engagement. The product of your friend’s presence clearly will
aid this and other communities.

Yes, one of the most important things to come out of that work will be
the lessons that they can share with other filmmakers.

Aside from your work in video, what other projects do you have?

We are planning small studio workshops for the production of slides. In
our film projection work, we have recognized a great limitation. The for¬
eign films we show often reflect realities very different from ours and
thus unimportant to us, although a few, like Sanjines' BLOOD OF THE CONDOR,
almost exactly parallel Peruvian life. So we are trying to organize these
studios with other filmmakers and technicians and with groups in the bar¬
riadas. Once the studios exist, social and political organizations will be
able to take photographs of their own reality and then project those slides
for discussions and debates. The project is economically feasible and can
lead to greater popular enthusiasm and participation.

I don't know if you understand what kinds of economic limits we work un¬
der. I told you our exhibition group has three projectors, one broken by
the police. Of those, I got one by trading a horse for it! Another someone
"liberated" for us. The other was also a present, but it had only a motor
and no lens, nor bulb. We had to rebuild it completely.

We have had to establish a network of technical and industrial assistance,
such as finding ways to do lab work very cheaply. One of our members is
very good at electronics and can build a slide projector which can run off
batteries. All he needs is the lens to start with. We do slide shows with
black and white, 35mm positive slides. When we and other militant Latin
American filmmakers go to a film festival such as those in Cuba, we are not
looking for world-wide distribution. We just need enough sales to recuperate
our costs and to go on. The Peruvian government strongly censors all mili-

tant film and it really is not interested in protecting and encouraging film-
making in general, much less distributing 16mm films.

Do you and your collaborators plan to help the people of the unions, bar-
riadas, and peasant communities use photographic equipment to make their oim
videotapes, or super-8 films? Ve realize this is difficult, given the costs
and lack of resources here, but as you know, it has been done elsewhere.

Look, for the moment, for personal reasons, I can't plan much of that.

I have to finish my video projects first of all. I'm paid for much of my
video work. That and the writing and photographing for magazines keeps me
going. But, yes, we are thinking of involving workers in making video tapes,
in planning and scripting and the whole process. This is a concrete project,
but separate from my present work in video. In film the fundamental thing
is to push the ideas of Cinematdgrafo , to get a debate going in the film
movement.

JUMP CUT NO. 28

Let me say just a few words about the group who published Cinematdgrafo .

We meant to make films, films arising out of political and ideological dis¬
cussions about film and about Peruvian reality. But we could not make them,
mainly because of economic conditions. Out of a group of about fifteen
people, five of us participated the most in discussions and reached a certain
level of unity. We five put out the magazine and began to play a very active
role in the film movement of 1974-1976 which we discussed earlier. The cen¬
tral preoccupation of Cinematbgrafo is the problem of what a national cinema
is. In Number 4, we intend to have a long theoretical article on this
problem, resulting from an internal editorial seminar which went on for
six or eight intensive meetings and which we taped. We discussed national
cinema from political, cultural, economic, social, and cinematic points of
view. Since 1975 there has been no insistent debate and no public discus¬
sion on national, political cinema, and this is very damaging. We wish to
pick up the impulse of 1975, to stimulate a great debate and promote a new
cinematic movement in this country. ■

INTERVIEW WITH PEDRO PIMENTE

FILM REBORN IN MOZAMBIQUE

—Clyde Taylor
INTRODUCTION

The first films produced by independent Mozam¬
bique toured the United States at the End of
1981, accompanied by lectures and dialogues from
Pedro Pimente, assistant director of the Mozam¬
bique Film Institute (INACINE), and Camilo De
Sousa, Mozambican filmmaker. The tour was orga¬
nized by Positive Productions, a Washington,
D.C., film collective.

Among the films premiered were these. THESE
ARE THE WEAPONS (b/w, 50 min.), a documentary
portrayal of the past and continuing struggle
against foreign domination, focuses on the cost¬
ly invasions against Mozambique by the former
Ian Smith regime of southern Rhodesia. MUEDA
(b/w, 80 min.), directed by Ruy Guerra, captures
the annual reenactment of the townspeople of
Mueda of their early struggles for independence
from Portugal. LET'S FIGHT FOR ZIMBABWE (color,
30 min.), a co-production with Angola, examines
the successful seizure of independence by the
people of Zimbabwe. THEY DARE CROSS OUR BORDER
(b/w, 25 min.) documents the Mozambican response
to a South African-led attack on Matola, close
to the capital, Maputo, in January 1981. THE
OFFENSIVE (b/w, 30 min.) offers a candid report
on a campaign against corruption, bureaucracy,
and inefficiency in Mozambique. UNITY IN FEAST
(color, 10 min.) portrays the celebration of
independent Mozambican culture at the first Fes¬
tival of Traditional Song held in Maputo.

The Mozambican representatives also brought
with them footage of South Africa's recent inva¬
sion of Angola, shot by Camilo De Sousa. They
have not completed that film-in-progress because
of breakdown in the film institute's one optical
printer.

Film production equipment was the primary goal
of this fund-raising tour. Pedro Pimente ob¬
served that the film schools of several univer¬
sities they visited had far better equipment
than the entire nation of Mozambique. The tour
met with success through the contribution of a
16mm optical printer (they still need a 35mm
printer) and the raising of over $8,000.

This interview was recorded during the tour in
the San Francisco Bay Area, organized by the
African Film Society, and is reprinted courtesy
of the African Film Society update. Included at
the end are two questions and responses from a
dialogue with the audience at the Pacific Film
Archives, 15 November 1981, where THESE ARE THE
WEAPONS was screened along with other films.

Films from the Mozambican Film Institute are
distributed in the United States by Positive
Productions, 48 Q Street, NE, Washington, DC
20002, (202) 529-0220.

Tell us something about the origin and direc¬
tion of the Mozambique Film Institute.

The Mozambique Film Institute was founded in
1976, just some months after Independence. Some
years before, during the armed struggle, FRELIMO
started to use cinema as one of its several
weapons. But with Mozambican filmmakers then,
some foreign filmmakers were invited to come to
film the struggle.

For instance, THESE ARE THE WEAPONS uses most¬
ly archive footage because the Film Institute
has very limited resources. The armed struggle
was only shot by foreign filnmakers, mostly by
Robert Van Lierop, an Afro-American who made A
LUTA CONTINUA and 0 POVO ORGANIZADO. The Mozam¬
bique Film Institute started when people like
Robert Van Lierop started making films on Mozam¬
bique, films in which Mozambicans are actors and
directors of their own destiny, of their own
future. These films were used on an external
level, for diplomatic purposes, to inform people
about what was going on in Mozambique and also
internally.

From this moment, it was clear to our leaders
that cinema could be very important for the new
nation's development. That's why some months
after Independence and in a moment when Mozam¬
bique was facing very difficult problems— for
example, all the Portuguese were fleeing the

country and for twelve million people there were
only forty doctors— the government decided to
found a film institute, just after it started a
literacy campaign.

Our first problem was to decolonize. Before
Independence, some Portuguese had made a few
films used for propaganda for colonialism; the
films' postproduction was done entirely abroad,
in Portugal or South Africa, although shot in
Mozambique.

Mozambique faced a classical situation of de¬
pendence in terms of film distribution. For
only forty-five cinema halls, Mozambique was
importing more than a thousand film titles, all
from very few points of origin: US films, Indian
films, Kung Fu films, and the worst European
films, such as Spaghetti Westerns from Italy.

Of course, we have an ideological explanation
for this but also an economic explanation since
the companies based in Mozambique and South Af¬
rica used film to export currency in a classic
situation of economic dependence.

So the first task for the Institute was to
transform the situation by making sure that the
films distributed in Mozambique were in accord
with the political, cultural, and human values
of Mozambique and to do so in an economically
beneficial way for Mozambique.

So we started our activity distributing revo¬
lutionary films from many countries, socialist
countries. And the support that we had from the
public for this new kind of film showed us that
the idea that the public only likes bad films is
wrong.

Was the film industry nationalized? Both pro¬
duction and distribution?

Yes, in 1978. We are a state organization,
but Mozambique is a very poor state with all
kinds of other priorities in medicine, food,
clothing, etc. So cinema can't have priority in
terms of finance. Film production had to become
self-financed. We decided to become so through
distribution, in order to start national film
production.

In terms of production, we started from noth¬
ing. Not one Mozambican filmmaker existed in
1975. We started training people and getting
technology. Since 1978 we have had the basic
technical facilities to produce, in black and
white, 16mm and 35mm films. We started from a
small organization of six people and now we are
eighty.

Even after twenty years of independence, sev¬
eral African countries don't have a film insti¬
tute. Since Independence, we have made seventy
documentaries and four feature films. It is our
victory. We are not modest, we are not hypo¬
crites; it's our victory.

Our main objective is to produce and distrib¬
ute films which in one sense or another can re¬
flect our reality, our problems, our lives, our
past, our goals. Films from other countries can
aid our growing, can reflect the reality of oth¬
er people, >which we need to know. We want to
make cinema a freedom tool, to use cinema to
free our minds, to allow people to use films to
pose questions about themselves and the world,
about all situations.

We believe even entertainment films can
achieve an educational purpose and allow people
to transform themselves. Transforming them¬
selves they are transforming society, and we
believe that transforming society they are also
transforming the cinema so a new and different
cinema can be born.

Would you say something about the film-viewing
experience of the Mozambican people at the time
of Independence?

Cinema had been something limited to the Por¬
tuguese here. For many reasons, the Mozambican
masses couldn't see cinema before Independence.

In the old days, the forty-five cinema halls In
the cities served 200,000 Portuguese settlers.
There were not enoughs uy a long shot, for
twelve million Mozambicans.

For most of our people, cinema is a direct
fruit of Independence. When we arrive in a very
remote village and show a film, people will tell
us, "This Is a result of Independence because
before Independence this village never saw a
film." So most of our people have not been ali¬
enated by dominant Imperialist cinema, and we
can create a new audience which will use film
other than to digest It to escape from dally
problems.

I under St cujd that Jean-Luc Godard, when he was
in Mozambique, was interested in the impact of
cinema on people who had not had it before.

We had a research project to define what kinds
of Images we should produce In Mozambique, where
most people are looking at film Images for the
first time in their lives. We wanted to study
how people can be transformed by a new Image and
how people can transform Images themselves.

This experiment turned out to be too costly and
the funding agency pulled out at the last min¬
ute. But we had wanted to use all means of au¬
dio-visual communication— film, video, slides,
posters, stills— to learn from the public what
kind of new audio-visual language we should cre¬
ate.

We think there Is a risk In a country like
Mozambique that In our social transformation
process the Image producers will not be able to
build an Image of a new society. We believe
that Images are not neutral. Images always car¬
ry the culture and ideology of the society which
makes them. And the producers of Images, all of
us, have been educated by the Imperialist Image.
Even If we resist this Image, even If we de¬
nounce It, we still have been educated by It and
our dally life is full of this Image, In every
magazine and every film. So In this sense. Im¬
age production would not contribute to freeing
the mind but would only perpetuate the Image of
imperialism.

We have been studying other socialist experi¬
ences with films, and we think that at a certain
level of development In socialism there Is a
tendency to Imitate the dominant Image. But you
cannot use the same Image and merely change the
Ideology. It Is necessary to change the Image
to really produce a new thing, the product of a
new Ideology.

In a country like Mozambique with 95 percent
illiteracy In 1975, where there Is still a high
level of Illiteracy (even though we had a na¬
tional literacy campaign), where our people have
been very distant from any kind of Information
for so many years, now we have to produce Infor¬
mation through Images In order to allow these
people to make the transformations quickly.
Technological societies move very fast. To get
out from underdevelopment, we need to complete
historical stages very quickly. During five
centuries we were pushed out of history, and now
we have to recover from that In a short time.

If we don't transform ourselves quickly, we will
remain In underdevelopment.

On the one hand we need to be very careful
because of our education and our past. On the
other hand we need to move quickly. I think
this contradiction Is solved by transforming all
our Image producers. Even the projectionist
must change his relation to cinema, and so must
the audience change Its relations with Images.

Only this Ideological transformation will allow
us to avoid the risk of making the same error
that other people have been making.

Our challenge as producers of Images In an
underdeveloped country Is very hard. We produce
Information every day, and we know this fnforma-
tlon acts on people's minds. We must teach the
teacher, but In Mozambique the teacher Is the
people. You can't say. "I'm a filmmaker; I'm
dealing with high technology. That's my prob¬
lem, and I don't want to be In contact with the
masses." Since we believe that the teacher Is
the masses, the people, teaching the teacher
means transforming ourselves. Only then can we
produce the Images that our society needs at
every moment. If not, we will make Images, good
ones, maybe, but that do not reflect the exact
stage of our evolution.

We have a lot of theory In our age. We have

JUMP CUT NO. 28

been reading film books from other cultures at
other stages of development. There is a natural
tendency to want to imitate these things and to
think that this is "the real cinema." But our
new cinema will be born from the destruction of
the old cinema, the dominant one now. So we
have to be very vigilant, very careful, and it's
difficult.

On this tour in the United States we've had to
see our films many times, which allows us to
think about them. We see a lot of cliches there
which do not come out of Mozambique but from our
education, things learned from Santiago Alvarez
in Cuba or from others, from I don't know where.

Some pople say this is a chauvinist perspec¬
tive, but we dp accept the need to study others'
film experiences. But the determining thing in
transforming Mozambique will be our own experi¬
ence and not experiences which come out of other
realities.

Bas there been any effort to train people in
film viewing?

Most people in the Film Institute started
viewing films after Independence inside the In¬
stitute. Of course, some of us, because of our
education, have a past history of film viewing.
For example, for several years I participated in
cine clubs, just like those here. But since
most people in the Institute started viewing
films on entering the Institute, it's necessary
to educate them in a very urgent way since they
will produce film. .

We are also educating big audiences to view
films, in the same sense that we are teaching
people how to read and write in Mozambique. We
do this through mobile cinema to reach people
living in rural zones. And we make a screening
not only a cinematic event but a wider political
and cultural event.

We never just show a film that would create
paternalism. Because then people would feel,
"Okay, they are offering me a film, and okay, 1/
accept it. I'll be underdeveloped all the time,
accepting what they offer."

When we show a film, we ask people to show us
something of their own culture. We put in a lot
of political effort to get them to discuss a
problem, to introduce new information. We must
make it a very dynamic thing. We can't arrive,
show a film, and say, "Bye-bye— see you next
time." That would make the spectator submit to
the spectacle. We bring films, but we want peo¬
ple to produce their culture and not be submit¬
ted by films, by only one way of culture.

The Institute's educational work derives not
only from the films but from using cinema. Cin¬
ema is only a means, not an end in itself. So
we can't use cinema only to show it. We must
use it to provoke something else, another kind
of discussion communication. It can come
through speaking, through dance, through sing¬
ing, or through discussing problems.

How have American audiences responded to your
fi 1ms ? 0

Viewers here know a little something about
Mozambique and want to know more. So in princi¬
ple they react positively to our films. But
it's a long process to educate people here to
the shocking and hard reality of Mozambique.

Ours is the reality of war, the reality of peo¬
ple facing very hard problems— economic, cultur¬
al, and social problems. But it's also a reali¬
ty of a people with a big confidence in itself,
people with a hope for something better. But
people in the U.S. also have a great hope for
something better.

Of course, we must have continuous communica¬
tion for people abroad to understand our exact
problems and to be more critical about our
films. Because although it's good to hear ap¬
plause, we need critiques.

An Afro-American student at VC Berkeley said
she understood why you made the films for Mozam¬
bique but wanted to know why you showed them
here, outside Mozambique.

We believe that we are not isolated in our
struggle, in our problems, in our daily life.

Our struggle has a lot to do with and to say to
other countries. It is important for us to feel
we are not isolated. With all our problems, we
need international solidarity to achieve our
process and go forward. And we need to inform
people in foreign countries about our reality
because their mass media are organized to manip¬
ulate reality. Those media present all peoples
struggling for self-determination as being man¬
ipulated by superpowers, who intend to do this
and that and to kill people and all that. This
is not true! We only want to achieve a basic
freedom. But when a people fights for freedom,
the international mass media always say that
that people is fighting for another superpower.
They always put you in terms of colonialism.

They can't believe that people want to free
themselves only for themselves and not for an¬
other superpower. People in other countries
must know this to allow them to better under¬
stand their own reality and to make the links
between their reality and other realities.

In this sense, I think we can contribute to a
new international order of communication between
people, which is an order without the monopoly
of communication and information by some coun¬
tries.

Thinking of an American audience, when they
see films like TBESB ARB TBB MBAPONS and MUBDA,
what ought they be aware of that is different
fran what they might expect?

We want to tell people that they must accept
that we have our own culture, our own history,
our own past and tradition, and that we will
tend to make our own things in Mozambique. It's
a basic thing for any people to achieve a pro¬
cess of liberation, but liberation is a concept
that must be opened up. Sometimes liberation is
a very limited concept. It's not made casually.
This is said to put in the minds of people that
when people are trying to liberate themselves,
it's dangerous— and it is— but for the exploit¬
ers, it is really dangerous!

People must understand that culture and poli¬
tics are the same thing; they are the result of
the same thing. There is no basic contradiction
between politics and culture, although there can
be between culture and certain forms of poli¬
tics. We must try to coordinate the two, to
join the political front to the cultural front,
to something in evolution, in progress.

We don't want to be opposition filmmakers be¬
cause we have no contradictions with the Mozam¬
bique's political front. The political front
derives from the cultural front as well as the
cultural front derives from certain political
achievements in Mozambique. This is true in any
society, and our films can contribute to peo¬
ples' understanding of this.

MUEDA

iYrmnMa jl mjah>>a<xe.

Of course, each people has specific realities;
we can analyze these realities and point out
that direction. But some methods of analysis
can be better used in different situations.

What we propose through our films is that our
method of analysis can produce a new behavior
among filmmakers. It will concern not only film
style and content but situations of production
and distribution. But also something which is
larger, which is the world. We cannot separate
films and what's going on in the world but must
always try to find the links that exist. Film
is a good vehicle to find the links between pol¬
itics and culture.

Camilo De Sousa (L) and Pedro Pimente (R)
Photo by Positive Productions

(Question from the audience at Pacific Film
Archives) South Africa and Rhodesia chose to

realizapao ruy guerra

product

cent invasion of Angola by South Africa. That
film is ready in Mozambique, but we don't have
an optical printer to make prints and show it
all over the world. And this would have sup¬
ported SWAPO and Namibia, to have shown this
film here today.

(Question from the audience) Bas there been
any dialogue between Mozeunbican filmmakers and
independent progressive filmmakers in this coun¬
try who seek to show the contradictions in U.S.
society from a black point of view and to show
the relations of U.S. foreign policy to the op¬
pression of other Third World countries?

One of our objectives is to make such contacts
because we don't know anything about Afro-Ameri¬
can cinema. It's obvious that international
relations are organized to impede independent
Afro-American filmmakers from contacting us and
us from contacting them. But here these con¬
tacts have been made through concrete acts: for
example, Larry Clark, an independent Afro-Ameri¬
can filmmaker, decided to give his film PASSING

THROUGH to Mozambique. This is a very concrete
thing and demonstrates a sense of solidarity
between him and us. From a gesture like this,
we have a platform for talking. From this ges¬
ture, we can do anything.

We are poor, but ideologically we are richer
than the rich people. We are trying, by speak¬
ing in the U.S., to make it clear that our
struggle as filmmakers in Mozambique is not iso¬
lated from the struggle of U.S. independent
filmmakers. It's possible to find a way; it's
only a matter of our own capacity. And we be¬
lieve we have found the way.

invade and get involved with your liberation —
why can’t you cross the border and get inv'^lved
with liberating Namibia?

Mozambique's foreign minister could answer
this question better. We will give any kind of
support to the Namibians if the Namibians ask it
of us. There were Mozambican soldiers in Rhode¬
sia. It is public knowledge we never hid from
anyone. It's a tradition.

But support has different forms. THESE ARE
THE WEAPONS shows that the weapons are not just
military ones. There are several weapons and
support has several forms. Thus, supporting us
to make films in Mozambique supports liberation
in Namibir. Last September, Camilo Oe Souza was
in southern Angola making a film about the re-

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A lot of things can be done to change the lack
of communication between Mozambique and U.S.
filmmakers. Concretely, we are trying to orga¬
nize a week of Afro-American cinema in Mozam¬
bique. From this we can discover something else
to do, and from that, something else. I believe
that everything is to be done; nothing has been
done yet. ■

tOUNOING Off THI GLIM lOSlNG SfUD HOiOIMO fT Off SHIf STALLS AMO

SfTTLSS TO THI
OAOUMO

UNIR CIN£MA

Revue du Cinema Africain

B. P. 160

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C.C.P. VAST Jean 428887 A BORDEAUX

TOOTSIE (Continued from p.1)

In presenting itself as a feminist film, TOOT¬
SIE seems to follow in the footsteps of films
such as 9 TO 5 and KRAMER VERSUS KRAMER, other
Hollywood films purporting to sensitively deal
with issues of concern to women. 9 TO 5 sold
"working women a bill of goods, "6 minimizing
work issues with slapstick, fantasy, and women
who were as guilty of victimization as the men
who were the alleged focus of sexism in the
film. In KRAMER, Dustin Hoffman's character
fulfills the task of motherhood so easily that
he goes from a man who didn't even know what
grade his son was in to a perfect woman/mother
in six months. Because woman's work isn't val¬
ued, Kramer's newfound vocation is cause for the
film's pivotal emotional scenes; when men do
what had before been only women's work, it be¬
comes the stuff of which epics are made.

We ultimately learn that not only does it take
a man to do work well but also that it takes a
man to be a "good," powerful, assertive “woman."
When Andrew Sarris marvels that Hoffman "has
soared with Jessica Lange into the stratosphere
of redemptive romance in a rare display of mutu¬
al enhancement, 7 he misses the point. At the
end, their relationship reconciled, Michael and
Julie walk down the street arm in arm, her di¬
rectionless personal life saved by Michael's
presence. And the camera freezes for the final
credits. However, Julie was redeemed only be¬
cause of "a man and his strength" in its most
stereotyped form, the film's final freeze-frame
perhaps emphasizing the immutability of a manip¬
ulative, patriarchal system under the guise of
feminist inspiration.

I wish to thank Norene Chesebro, Scott Chese-
bro, and Roger Gilman for their helpful partici
pation in discussions about TOOTSIE.

^Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune, 17 December 1982
Section 3, pp. 1-2.

^Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, 17 December
1982, pp. 63-64.

^Carrie Rickey, "The Ten Best," village voice,

4 January 1983, p. 40. Rickey's article, how¬
ever, illustrates TOOTSIE'S appeal to many au¬
diences: whitewashed "transvestitism," another
source of titillation and humor. She writes:

The only assertive, apparently strong woman we
see in the film is the soap opera's producer.

But her character remains flat and incidental,
only serving the patriarchal structure of the
film when she tells Dorothy/Michael : "You're a
breakthrough lady for us, Dorothy. You're your
own person." Evidently, even a soap opera pro¬
duced by a woman never would have featured a
strong, assertive woman. Only a man could have
initiated a change in the patriarchal system.

So not only does Michael treat Sandy badly, vic¬
timizing women in a way that parallels the Ron/
Julie relationship he so despises (Ron's infi¬
delity, his condescension, pats on Julie's rear,
etc., etc.), but our only strong woman character
seems to victimize women as well. She casts
them as weak, unassertive, spineless sorts:
roles that amplify our perceptions of them as
"beautiful but weak" in their "real" lives.

Only when Dorothy/Michael appears does the
breakthrough occur, male initiated.

Much of the humor in the film stems from
Michael's thoughtless treatment of Sandy; anoth¬
er source derives from the fact that it is con¬
venient to be a man, at times, because being a
woman apparently means ineffectuality. For ex¬
ample, Michael is about to try on a dress of
Sandy's while she's in the shower. (He thinks
it might be a good possibility for "Dorothy.").
When she catches him with his clothes off, the
only way for him to protect his heterosexuality
is to say, "I want you, Sandy, I want you," com¬
ically walking around the room with his pants
down around his ankles. As a result, however,
Sandy is ultimately victimized by his sexual
excuse as he falsely promises her a relationship
he has no intention of fulfilling. (Before
this, their relationship was platonic.) In an¬
other scene, when Dorothy/Michael needs to hail

a cab, s/he tries meekly in her "woman's" voice,
then quickly yells "Taxi!" in Michael's deep
baritone. Of course, the cab stops. We laugh
as we did when Dorothy/Michael slammed the head
of a man trying to steal a taxi from her, using
packages laden with designer clothing— such as¬
sertiveness, the ability to fight for one's
rights, is a "male" characteristic, the film
says. A woman doing this successfully is out of
character and humorous. And, if she really is a
woman, she's likely to be unsuccessful in get¬
ting a taxi anyway.

Perhaps the most blatant way in which TOOTSIE
undercuts its own pretentions comes when Doro¬
thy/Michael accompanies Julie home to her fa¬
ther's farm for a weekend. The film's mask of
"sensitivity to woman" strips away when our
point of view, not only Dorothy/Michael' s but
the camera's, makes us sexual voyeurs. As
Michael gradually falls more in love with Julie,
the camera caresses Julie's opulent, peasant-
dressed body in slow motion, from an omniscent
point of view. This reveals the more directly
patriarchal implications of the film and the
voyeurism isn't criticized; rather, it rein¬
forces the film's sexist assumptions and struc¬
ture. The form, as usual, substantiates the
content.

1982 will be remembered as a dragfest, a
cross-dressers' paradise. May I propose
an award . . . for Best Performance in a
Transvestite Role?

The movie is mildly kinky entertainment, un
critical of its own inconsistencies.

^Pauline Kael, "The Current Cinema: Tootsie,
Gandhi, and Sophie," The sew Yorker, 27 Decem¬
ber 1982, pp. 68-72.

®Carol Slingo, "9 TO 5: Blondie Gets the Boss,
JUMP CUT, No. 24/25, p. 8.

7Andrew Sarris, "Why TOOTSIE Works and SOPHIE
Doesn't," village Voice, 21 December 1982, pp
71-72.

TOOTSIE also generates humor by ridiculing
artists who attempt to deal with political is¬
sues. Michael becomes Dorothy in order to raise
$8,000 to finance his roommate's play, "Return
to the Love Canal." As Michael's agent wrily
notes, "Nobody wants to see these things— why
spend $20 to see a couple who moved back to
chemical waste? They can see that in New Jer¬
sey." And the audience laughs in uproarious
approval.

Liberation ... in reverse

force," fought the airline's practice of aiding
in the deportation of Salvadorean refugees.

In a multi -thousand dollar deal with the
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS),
Western flev^.' Salvadorean deportees on the first
leg of a journey that sent them to Mexico then
on to El Salvador, where many faced torture
and death.

The postcard at left, created by Micky McGee
and Mary Lynn Hughes for CISPES, was widely
distributed and used as an attention-getter for
Western stockholders at their July, 1982 annual
meeting in Los Angeles. The stockholders were
implored to stop the Westem/INS collaboration
that sent the refugees on what were called
"death flights."

Peter Schey, of the National Center for
Imnigrants' Rights, told stockholders that
various religious organizations threatened
boycotts of Western "unless the company ceases
its involvement (with the) death flights."

Out of 11 million share votes, 4.2 million
voted for cessation of the airline's involve¬
ment, far beyond the 5% anticipated by CISPES
representatives. That vote and other pressures
forced the company to stop transporting the
deported Salvadorean refugees in September,
1982.

In the summer of 1982, the imaginary became
real for the Committee in Solidarity with the
People of El Salvador (CISPES). Their coalition
including religious groups and sympathizers
within Western Airlines, the "liberating air

Imagine an ad campaign hailing an airline's
"liberation" of fares, air routes and conveni¬
ences for air travelers while concurrently that
same airline is sending deportees to certain
death in El Salvador.

What is Western Airlines hiding behind their billboards?

SXtllA!

*ro. / ^ , ***** A ^0 i I *

However, their decision did not stop INS.

INS has now made an agreement with Mexicana
Airlines of Mexico to continue the death flights
If you want to get involved in the renewed ef¬
forts to end these flights, call or write to:
CISPES, P.O.Box 26723, Los Angeles, CA 90026,
(213) 660-4587.

— Lary Moten

Billboard: Ixw Antelet, 1962

I Que esconde Western Airlines detrds de sus cartelares?

JUMP CUT NO. 28

SPECIAL

SECTION

Alternative cinema in the 80s

INTRODUCTION

—Chuck Kleinhans

In 1953, six years into the anticomnunist
witchhunt in Hollywood and the culture industry,
John Howard Lawson, former president of the
Screen Writers Guild and member of the Hollywood
Ten, summed up the Communist Party's experience
of actively working in a limited but significant
way in a major capitalist entertainment indus¬
try. After describing the overt government cam¬
paign against the left in Hollywood which drama¬
tized the struggle for ideological control of
culture, Lawson called for the creation of a
truly independent alternative, not

. . . the independence of film producers
who are somewhat grudgingly allowed to
exist on the fringes of the Hollywood in¬
dustry, using money borrowed from the big
banks and dependent on the system of dis¬
tribution and exhibition controlled by the
Big Money. Production which is indepen¬
dent in a creative sense must be free from
monopoly control, free from the class dom¬
ination of the bourgeoisie, and— this is a
condition which is in some respects the
most difficult to guarantee— free from the
ideology of the dominant class. {Film in
the Battle of Ideas, p. 117)

Lawson's conclusion, that the main task for
radicals is to build a media culture outside of
the commercial system, remains valid today.

While developing a left and feminist analysis of
Hollywood and TV continues to be an important
concern, it is also clear that radicals cannot
gain significant influence on, much less control
of, any mass market filmmkaking short of a so¬
cialist revolution. To the extent that Holly¬
wood moves in a progressive direction from time
to time, it is in response to active mass move¬
ments. Jane Fonda, Ed Asner, Robert Redford,
and Jill Clayburgh have space as creative and
public figures became millions of people are
ready for a drastic change in American social
and political life and not the other way around.

From the start jump cut has been committed to
supporting alternative film and video making.
Because of that and our ongoing discussion of
independent work in every issue, it's somewhat
artificial to have a "Special Section" to call
attention to the topic. But stopping here be¬
tween past and future articles and interviews
provides an opportunity to discuss several con¬
cerns that shape jump cut's work in independent
media.

While there's always been agreement within
JUMP CUT about the importance of alternative
film, we've never put forward a specific "line"
about what kinds of independent work and what
modes, forms, styles, topics, and issues are
most important. While different writers and
staff people have certainly had strong opinions
about those issues, it has always seemed most
important to provide an environment for active
dialogue. In an editorial in jump cut No. 3
(1974), John Hess and I indicated some of the
issues we thought were pertinent then.

★ ★ *

This issue contains an interview with euid an
article by people working in independent politi¬
cal filmmaking, a subject that JUMP CUT will
continue to explore in future issues. The views
presented certainly don't exhaust the range of
the subject, but they offer some obvious con¬
trasts.

Following the French general strike in May-
June, 1968, Jean-Pierre Gorin became Jean-Luc
Godard's partner. The two have pursued a revo¬
lutionary form to match an explicitly revolu¬
tionary content, and they produced the most con¬
troversial political films of the past six
years. Cine Manifest is a new group working in
San Francisco, coming to terms with their di¬
verse experience in film and radical politics
and trying to create progressive new films for
the mass audience.

Despite their differences, these filmmakers
are engaged with the same problems of subject
matter and treatment , relationship to the film
audience, and defining who that audience is, or
should be . . . all of them, finally, political
questions.

In this context it 's useful to raise Mother
question, or rather to recall one raised several
years ago by Norm Fruchter about left media

work. In an article in LIBERATION (May, 71),
Fruchter, who had worked in a Newsreel collec¬
tive, made a number of criticisms of the way the
movement of the 60's dealt with the media. One
criticism was of the drift of radicals from di¬
rect organizing into one form or another of
propaganda work; the underground press, research
groups, printing efforts, and the Newsreel col¬
lectives. Although these groupings shared the
larger political and organizational problems of
the left at the time, they also took on their
own characteristic form: often the work at hand
required only a small working collective, was
task oriented, involved strong primary rela¬
tionships with each other, accentuated political
discussion, and had an absorbing, rotating divi¬
sion of labor. While the positive achievement
of this form was to define a style of collective
and participative work (and frequently a context
in which questions such as personal elitism and
sexism could be raised, and sometimes fruitfully
dealt with), the collective tended to function
as well as an isolated group, defining itself
and its media work in a "we/them* dichotomy,
with no direct contact with "them" — the people
they were trying to communicate with. As Fruch¬
ter stated it, "Almost all propaganda work is a
way of doing political work without directly
facing or confronting a constituency ... *

The criticism remains with us today, whether
the filmmaker is an individual or a collective,
and in many ways the problem is aggravated by
the decline of the mass movement of the 60's,
when at least one could feel that a political
film was going out to "the movement" where it
would be used and where it would aid people in
motion. Today that national organized movement
is much harder to identify, and where it appears
it is largely engaged in one kind of educational
work or another — essentially the making and dis¬
tributing of propaganda — or in service work,
except for scattered local struggles for power.
Which is to say we're in a different historical
moment, and that the same basic questions have
to be answered in fresh terms.

Film in euid of itself is not a viable way of
breaking out of this relative isolation. Film
appears as a finished product, a totality, with
the result that documentaries or films of polit¬
ical analysis appear more coherent and unified
them the original situation was, and the makers
appear, in turn, more certain — and unfortunately
sometimes more rhetorical and dogmatic— than
they really are. Movies are essentially private
and reflective, peissive individual experiences.
And to equate the viewing experience, however
intellectually engaging, with political action,
is false. ... At best, political films can
only have a limited effect when operating with¬
out a direct relation to ongoing political ac¬
tivity. To paraphrase the Peruvian poet Cesar
Vallejo, people become revolutionaries not from
ideas they learn, but from lived experience.

But, dealing with these problems cannot be
based on singing the "Where Bas the Movement

have the opportunity now to learn from the les¬
sons of the past, explore the realities of the
present, and establish a relation to audience
and constituency that goes beyond the already
radicalized — who were, all too often, the exclu¬
sive audience for radical media in the past.

For a radical today, using one's skills making
films might be, but does not have to be, "a way
of doing political work without directly facing
or confronting a constituency." Fruchter 's
criticism is still pertinent , but it must be
responded to with the creative tension of work¬
ing with a constant atvareness of and commitment
to a constituency. Two questions about one's
work go a long way to keeping it from being an
escape: "For whom?" and "For what end?"

Cine Manifest argues for films that combine a
left perspective with a popular narrative form
already familiar to the mass audience, while
Gorin and Godard believe that traditional forms
themselves negate radical content. This ques¬
tion has been the most hotly discussed one among
political filmmakers and critics here and abroad
in recent years. One solution to the question
has been offered by some feminist filmmakers in
the US who have shown it is possible to reach
new audiences— in women's groups, libraries, and
public schools — with films that combine personal
statement and political emalysis with experimen¬
tal' euid innovative means. We do not have a for¬
mula for the best kind of political filmmaking,
but can see that answering the questions "For
whom?" and "For what end?" is a necessary step.
The fact is that there are political struggles
filmmakers can relate to and audiences who need
their films.

it it It

JUMP CUT has changed over the years. We began
with five editors fresh out of years of graduate
school in Bloomington, Indiana— not exactly a
place where you could see a lot of independent
film. Only one of us had filmmaking experience
at that time. Today almost everyone on the edi¬
torial board and staff has had some experience
in making films and tapes, and for several years
about half the folks involved are actively mak¬
ing independent work. We've also changed
through meeting many film and video makers, see¬
ing lots of new films and tapes, and being in¬
volved in discussions of the key issues. While
we haven't given up analyzing the dominant cine¬
ma (after all, you can't escape it), we've grown
in our commitment to and understanding of a rad¬
ical alternative.

At present two different but related activi¬
ties are needed to develop and strengthen an
oppositional film and video movement in North
America. First, those concerned must expand
their horizons and see that It Is Important to
bring together. In whatever ways possible, the
largest number of people who are coomltted to
opposing Reaganism In all Its forms. In politi¬
cal terms this Is the task of building an effec-

Altemative Cinema Conference

JUMP CUT NO. 28

LOOSE ENDS (David Burton Morris and Victoria Wozniaky 1975)

tive resistance coalition. A fragile version of
this emerged at the Alternative Cinema Confer¬
ence in 1979 when 400 radical media people gath¬
ered to discuss common concerns (see reports in
JUMP CUT Nos. 21 and 22).

The Alternative Cinema Conference marked the
clear emergence of new forces and new faces.
Feminists, black and Third World people, gays
and lesbians came forward as the cutting edge of
fresh thought and committed media work at the
meeting. We saw a broader spectrum of alterna¬
tive efforts, including anti-nuke and environ¬
mental work, community-based video, and new
projects in distribution and exhibition. Gener¬
ally speaking, a new sense was gained by almost
all the participants of the complex interrela¬
tionship of financing, production, distribution,
exhibition, criticism, and the relation to ongo¬
ing organizations and movements for social and
political change. In the wake of the confer¬
ence, however, people were unable to create a
sustaining organization.

Today, JUMP cut remains committed to providing
a forum for the central issues of alternative
cinema, a place for the voices of filmmakers as
well as critics, an arena for discussion by a
wide range of people with different political
analyses and programs. Of course jump cut is
only one part of a larger movement concerned
with building a radical media culture.

A broad-based alternative media movement must
have effective mechanisms for presentation and
discussion of political principles and differ¬

ences. A lowest common denominator situation
will stagnate without the discussion that allows
for growth and change in the face of new experi¬
ence. Yet such an effort can be fragmented and
reduced to silliness and acrimony if it is only
a forum for sectarian squabbling. The challenge
of promoting a healthy exchange of ideas on a
wide range of aesthetic, political, and practi¬
cal ideas must be met to provide growth and de¬
velopment for individuals, groups, and on a na¬
tional level. At present such discussion takes
place erratically at best. There are few na¬
tional or regional conferences which genuinely
bring together activists and artists, makers and
distributors, academics and organizers, anti¬
nuke folks and labor militants, blacks and
Latinos. Yet, obviously all these people and
many others have much to gain from getting to¬
gether and building alliances, sharing informa¬
tion, increasing mutual support, and pushing for
common goals. Among publications, only Cineaste
and jump cut have worked consistently and exten¬
sively to cover and discuss the situation of
alternative media from a left perspective, and
both have self-admitted limitations in doing the
job and are open to a variety of legitimate
criticisms. Clearly, much more needs to be
done.

The development of objective conditions which
create the space and energy for a resurgent pro¬
gressive movement is taking place at a key mo¬
ment in the history of American media. While
multinationals and conglomerates are increasing¬
ly taking control of the entertainment and com¬
munication industries, a vast technological

change is taking place with the appearance of
cable and subscriber TV, satellite communica¬
tion, video recorders, interactive computers,
and a whole range of new items and processes
which prefigure a very different media future,
even if no one seems to know what that future
is.

In the sixties, in response to a mass movement
and an urgent need for communications indepen¬
dent from the capitalist press and media, the
underground press blossomed into hundreds of
local papers which capitalized on the existence
of bargain basement printing technology. For
all its problems, erratic nature, and often
short-lived existence, the underground press
provided an immensely creative grass-roots re¬
sponse to an urgent need. Combining art and
politics, visuals and prose, information, enter¬
tainment, satire, cultural discussion and polit¬
ical analysis, it was a vital element in local
and national activity. Today we have the tech¬
nical potential to make and distribute video
materials in an equally creative way. Will it
Happen? It's probably too early to predict, but
it certainly is an opportunity that shouldn't be
missed if it can be brought off.

Building an oppositional media in the eighties
is an immense task. Yet it is absolutely cru¬
cial to the development of the entire spectrum
of progressive forces: workers and the poor,
gays and lesbians, blacks. Latinos and other
oppressed minorities, feminists, students, and
youth who face unemployment and militarism, and
many others. We live in a literate mass media
and mass culture society which increasingly con¬
centrates power and control in the hands of the
ruling capitalist class. Communication, educa¬
tion, information, entertainment, and other
functions of the opposition movement must use
contemporary means and find new forms for to¬
day's contents. It's a challenging prospect but
also an exciting one which calls for creativity,
imagination, hard work, commitment, individual
growth, and group interaction. We need only
compare the possibilities of radical media work
today with the deadly fit-in-the-slot orienta¬
tion of the dominant media to decide which side
offers cultural workers a better future.

It's in the context of a growing political
movement and new challenges for radicals that we
present the articles in this Special Section.
Lynn Garafola surveys the emerging progressive
feature movement with an eye to its potential
problems and successes. In an interview with
DEC Films, the leading Canadian distributor of
movement media, Margaret Cooper investigates the
practical politics of distribution. Two re¬
cently widely seen films provide the opportunity
for in-depth reviews as Doug Eisenstark discus¬
ses the anti-nuke feature documentary, WE ARE
THE GUINEA PIGS, and Sue Davenport looks at the
radical history film about women workers in
World War 2, ROSIE THE RIVETER. Expanding the
usual range of radical concerns, Claudia Gorbman
critiques an autobiographical experimental film,
SUSANA, while Gina Marchetti and Carol Slingo
consider avante garde filmmaker Sharon Couzin's
work. Concluding the survey of alternative cin¬
ema, Clyde Taylor provides an overview of recent
black independent film.

Taken together these articles mark many of
JUMP CUT'S major concerns in alternative media.-
Future issues will continue our commitment to
reporting, analyzing, and building an indepen¬
dent media culture as part of the movement for
radical social and political transformation.

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BRAZILIAN CINEMA INFORMATIVE AND COMFORTABLE III
JUMP CUT No. 21

Beyond Cinema Novo
Censorship in Brazil
TENT OF MIRACLES

Robert Stom and Randal Johnson
Robert Siam
Joan Dassin

JUMP CUT No. 22

Music in Glauber Rocha's Films
XICA DA SILVA
THE FALL

Update : Annotated Filmography

Graham Bruce
Rondoi Johnson
Robert Stom

Julianrw Burton, Robert Strom , Randal Johnson

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JUMP CUT NO. 28

Independent features
at the crossroads

—Lynn Garafola

The history of American independent feature film is a saga of wasted
talent and little recognition. Since the thirties, when independent film¬
makers first tried bucking Hollywood and working outside the studio system,
they have fought an uphill battle against vastly superior financial re¬
sources, distribution and exhibition monopolies, and the expectations of an
audience bred on the film capital's assembly-line product. (By "independ¬
ent", I mean a broad range of feature length, documentary or fictional
films financed outside traditional Hollywood and corporate channels, but at
the same time seeking serious public exposure. Although this definition
does not necessarily exclude "experimental", "educational", and "militant"
films, these types of films tend to be addressed to more specialized audi¬
ences, )

Although today's independents still contend against overwhelming odds,
the outlook has brightened. Barbara Koppel's HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A,, Miguel
Pinero's SHORT EYES, and Claudia Weill's GIRLFRIENDS have drawn critical
and popular attention to movies made outside the Hollywood establishment.

At the same time, the release of government monies through the National
Endowments for the Humanities and the Arts and individual state councils
has sparked a new bid among independents for public visibility and in¬
creased financial support.

The six-day Festival of American Independent Films, held in autumn 1979,
heralded this new status. With entries selected by the establishment-
minded Lincoln Center Film Society and the Film Fund, independents were,
for the first time, guaranteed more than token representation at the annual
New York Film Festival. Under the direction of Sandra Schulberg, a program
of fifteen pictures, including six of recent vintage, gave New Yorkers an
intimation of the vitality and diversity of independent feature filmmaking.

In an interview in in These Times, Schulberg noted some of the differen¬
ces between independent features of the past and today's "new American cin¬
ema." In the sixties, independent films, supported by a large college
audience, "were political by virtue of form." Today's filmmakers want to
make "socially and humanly responsible films," but they also want to reach
a larger audience. In particular, they want to tap potential filmgoers out¬
side the 18-25-year-old "commercial" market. Hence, she notes along with a
more populist approach to the American "heartlands," a new theatrical empha¬
sis among the recent crop of independent filmmakers. To compete with Holly¬
wood, today's independents are favoring conventional narratives over docu¬
mentaries (assumed to have less audience appeal), "sophistication" at the
expense of experiment, radical content instead of radical form.

Selection screenings for the festival confirmed a strong regional vein
in recent independent work. Unlike the past, when aspiring directors
flocked to Hollywood and New York, the country's twin motion picture capi¬
tals, today's independent films increasingly emerge from a local setting,
the work of filmmakers with roots in local communities. Socially and geo¬
graphically, the films showcased at the 1979 festival evoked a very differ¬
ent America from Hollywood's. Robert Young's ALAMBRISTAl, filmed in Mexico
and the Southwest, explored the plight of undocumented workers. BUSH MAMA
by Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima depicted the changing consciousness of
a welfare mother in Watts. In GAL YOUNG 'UN, Victor Nunez showed a back-
woods Florida woman who marries a bootlegger, while from the Great Plains
came NORTHERN LIGHTS, a film by John Hanson and Bob Nilsson about farmers
in the North Dakota Non-Partisan League, and Richard Pearce's HEARTLAND,
the story of a woman homesteader in Wyoming.

With the exception of ALAMBRISTAl and BUSH MAMA, these films are rooted
not only in the diversity of America but in its past. Like the ethnic re¬
vival and "roots-mania" of some years back, a strong vein of antiquarianism
runs through them, a mystique of the past that in varying degrees equates
family relics with social history. "GAL YOUNG 'UN enlivens our sense of
self," remarked the picture's community resource consultant Sam Gowan. "It
brought noise back to a long empty and great house. Old people said, 'I
remember...' and younger people searched attics. The film involves the
community, it continues the record, and it has given us greater continuity."

The North Dakota community where NORTHERN LIGHTS was filmed was equally
a source of inspiration. Both Hanson and Nilsson grew up in the area; they
know its Scandinavian traditions and its people intimately. Moreover, as
radicals, they bring to their subject an understanding of the political and
economic forces that threatened to destroy farming communities throughout
the Midwest on the eve of the first world war.

NORTHERN LIGHTS evolved from a half-hour documentary to a ninety-minute
"docudrama," described by Michael Dempsey in Film Quarterly as "a saga of
grass roots politics, a love story, and a period setting." In the passage
from fact to fiction, however, the movie wavers between historical recrea¬
tion and dramatic invention which are never completely fused. The beauti¬
fully wrought interiors, like the threshing and other farm scenes, are genu¬
ine evocations of another era while Judy Irola's masterful black and white
cinematography, in the words of one critic, "works... to give the film the
nostalgic remoteness of a turn-of-the-century family photograph." Indeed,
at times, the camera work and period setting take on a life independent of
the film's dramatic development.

There is nothing wrong with recreating the past. But in HEARTLAND, GAL
YOUNG 'UN, and NORTHERN LIGHTS the approach to history is a romantic one.
Families are idealized as a condition of group survival, and the obsession
with "authenticity", defined as specific artefacts--oil lamps, farm machin¬
ery, and the like— ends up fetishizing the past as something merely "quaint."
Nor are there many references to a larger historical context. In NORTHERN
LIGHTS, for example, the Non-Partisan League exists in a vacuum, isolated
from the political currents of its day. The Socialist Party, although ac¬
tive in the area, receives only passing mention while the war raging in
Europe is ignored altogether. Equally "unhistorical" in many of these pro¬
ductions is the depiction of personal relationships which too often smack
of television soap opera.

Even a film as ostensibly "radical" as THE WOBBLIES, the token document¬
ary screened at the 1979 New York Film Festival, is curiously depoliticized.
Structured around the recollections of surviving Wobblies, the film allows
oral history to dictate the parameters of its story, never questioning the
raw data of reminiscence or recasting what is being said into a broader
historical context. Why did the Lawrence strike succeed and the Paterson
strike fail? What was the relationship between the I.W.W. and the Social¬
ist Party? Who were the "hobos" who rode the boxcars and worked in the
lumber camps? Questions like these, suggested by the script itself, go not
only unanswered but unasked.

There is a curious dichotomy in the film between the radicalism of the
Wobblies— which survives in the individuals interviewed— and the apparent

NORTHERN LIGHTS

desire of the filmmakers to make the I.W.W. respectable and sympathetic to
a contemporary audience. The cutting of reminiscences on humorous upbeats
and the juxtaposition of rag tunes with pre-war film footage cast militant
events within a framework of anecdote and musical innocence while the pro¬
tagonists, shot in the homey comfort of retirement, spin their yarns like
"old folks" rather than revolutionaries. The Wobblies' dream of an anarcho-
syndicalist world controlled by workers is equally sanitized. If the imme¬
diate causes of pre-War radicalism were the social and economic injustices
of the day, alleviating bad working conditions, overcrowded tenements, and
suppression of free speech was not the Wobblies' only goal. In shifting
the emphasis from revolution to reform, the filmmakers not only fail to
explain the intense repression to which the Wobblies Were subjected but
■effectively transform radical aspirations into a "liberal" and hence poli¬
tically neutral context.

The trend toward "social antiquarianism" is fostered, in part, by govern¬
ment funding policies, and especially by the "populism" of the National
Endov^nent for the Humanities which funded THE WOBBLIES, NORTHERN LIGHTS and
HEARTLAND. Whether awarded directly or channeled through state councils,

NEH grants have become, since the mid-seventies, the single largest source
of government funding and the first major alternative to the patchwork of
private investment, loans, deferments, and cheap labor typical of independ¬
ent financing in the past.

NEH's sister organization, the National Endowment for the Arts (which
through its Florida council funded GAL YOUNG 'UN), has, for its part, com¬
mitted over a million dollars since 1978 to film production. Claudia
Weill's GIRLFRIENDS and Barbara Koppel's Crystal Lee Jordan project are
among the features which have received NEA support. Although the maximum
size of grants awarded nationally is $50,000 for institutions and $15,000
for individuals, NEA's policy of spreading the wealth among as many projects
as possible has meant that its grants are generally too small to affect the
budget of most independent features. (A budget-conscious filmmaker like
Walter Ungerer, however, has proved that it is possible to make a feature-
length color film on a $25,000 NEA grant.)

Filmmakers are, understandably, excited by the possibilities of NEH fund¬
ing and are pressing for additional allocations. Making even low-budget
movies is an expensive business, and the $2,000 per minute rule of thumb
quoted by an NEH officer to a prospective applicant is considerably more
than most independents normally have at their disposal. NEH, however, does
not fund films as such, but only where they are felt to be the most effec¬
tive treatment of a subject that will "convey an understanding of the human¬
ities to a broad general public." Moreover, it is not the only model of
government aid nor, indeed, the most desirable. By contrast to Western
European subsidy programs— advances on receipts in France, production
grants in England, direct aid and screenplay awards in Germany, film bank
loans and distribution in Italy--guidelines for content and bureaucratic
input at critical stages of the filmmaking process are built into NEH pro¬
cedures.

In 1978, NEH committed over eight million dollars to 66 media projects.
Just under half went to film production, pilot, and script development
grants. An additional 3.3 million was pledged to 18 TV projects, 15 at
the script development stage, a number of which will probably be produced
in a film rather than video format.

Despite an impressive track record, a look at the projects funded in
1978 indicates the impact of NEH guidelines and the "self-censorship" many
in the business feel they induce in both the pre-selecting of material and
its final presentation. Of the 41 projects in the production, pilot, and
script development categories, at least three-quarters were "historical."
Subjects ranged from a five-hour film series on Edith Wharton (which re¬
ceived a $400,000 outright production grant plus matching funds) to "One
Hundred Years of Struggle," a television series on the history of the
women's suffrage movement (awarded an $800,000 pilot grant), and "Tales of
Medical Life in America," a WGBH (PBS Boston) series on the social history
of medicine from 1721 to 1921 (given a $91,937 script development grant).

The impulse behind many of these shows is the notion of history "from
the bottom up." But where in the sixties and early seventies, this radical
reinterpretation of the past was tied to a contemporary political framework
and, in particular, to the struggles of groups disenfranchised from history.

JUMP CUT NO. 28

NORTHERS LIGHTS

time and again, in many NEH projects, the radical edge has been blunted by
deflecting political analysis into historical exposition. Thus a film
about Baltimore's black community looks back over 200 years at the organiza¬
tions created by slaves, free blacks, and freedmen, while "Mexican-American" ,
an eight-part television series, dramatizes episodes in the history of
Mexican-Americans. In both, almost no provision is made for analysis of
events since the fifties. In stressing ethnic or sexual "pride" and "roots",
history is viewed as a neutral territory, distinct from politics and ideol¬
ogy, or even a refuge from them.

Although film is a collaborative medium par excellence^ it is also a
genuinely creative one. Under the present system, however, creative pro¬
jects are defined by functions, their organic unity subdivided into a ser¬
ies of operations, the idea of a film turned into a synthesized product.

At each stage--planning, script development, pilot, and production--there
are proposals to write, budgets to revise, humanists (the NEH's slightly
exalted term for academic experts) to consult, reports to file, while ap¬
proval at one stage does not guarantee a favorable decision at the next.

Many who have worked on NEH projects suspect that the maze of bureaucratic
requirements and administrative stages exist less for the benefit of indi¬
vidual projects than to enable NEH to justify potentially controversial
grants to Congress. (Unlike the BBC with its indeoendent income, NEH re¬
lies on annual appropriations.) Of course, the rules may also reflect a
fear of taking chances and the simple unwillingness to relinquish control
of projects at any point in their production.

Some projects, like THE WOBBLIES and HEARTLAND, the first comoletely-
funded NEH feature, are lucky to make it to the finish. "One Hundred Years
of Struggle" is typical of less fortunate projects. After funding a pilot
on the pioneering American feminists Angelina and Sarah Grimke, NEH said it
would be prepared to finance additional episodes only if money from outside
sources was forthcoming. But raising money from "outside sources" is easier
mandated than done. Since 1978, production has been suspended, and "One
Hundred Years of Struggle" remains a victim of the piecemeal system of NEH
Support. Indeed, an advisor to a number of NEH projects, who asked that
his name be withheld, has asserted that endowment funding of a multi-part
series almost guarantees the project will fail. (See the case study of
HEARTLAND below.)

A further drawback to NEH support is that its subsidies extend only
through production. They do not cover the post-production costs — release
prints, distribution, publicity, and numerous other expenses--needed to
bring the finished product to its audience. MEH does not oppose theatrical
distribution, but its funding rationale in the past has favored programs
for broadcast as the most cost-efficient way of reaching a large audience.
While it is certainly true that a one-shot airing over public or educational
television reaches a statistically larger public than theatrical release,
the latter has what Schulberg calls "an undeniable legitimizing effect." A
film that opens in a hona fide theater commands serious attention from the
public and press.

On the question of financing, Schulberg favors a combination of private
and public funding. A position paper she drew up for the Independent Fea¬
ture Project "supports the establishment of an Independent Feature Corpora¬
tion to help finance a significant number of independent features..., partly
through direct subsidy, and partly by helping to secure additional financ¬
ing." The IFC could be funded, she suggests, in a number of ways — through
a special box office tax on commercial films, grants from NEA, direct Con¬
gressional appropriations, contributions from the Hollywood studios. Apart
from the difficulty of imagining Universal or the Transamerica Corporation
forking over half a million dollars, ostensibly to "develop new talent,"
this proposal, like the Feature Project's endorsement of tax shelter legis¬
lation to encourage private investment in "quality motion pictures," is
politically questionable. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that tax
shelters would necessarily stimulate investment in independent as opposed
to more commercially viable films. In Germany, for example, such legisla¬
tion had the opposite effect. Instead of putting their marks on the New
German Cinema, investors preferred to bankroll Hollywood productions which
control the lion's share of the local market.

Another area of production financing is public television. Unlike PBS,
which, with one notable exception, has a poor track record on independents,
state-subsidized television in most European countries provides direct
funding of all or a substantial part of the budget of many feature films.

In Germany and Italy, the system has worked well. Fellini's ORCHESTRA
REHEARSAL and much of Fassbinder's work were financed by national televi¬
sion stations. (Mark Rappaport, a New York based independent, has had two
films commissioned by West German television as well. THE SCENIC ROUTE,
his 1978 German-financed production which won the British Film Institute's
Award for the Best and Most Original Film of the Year, stood out among the
festival offerings as a distinctly personal vision.) European television
looks to government-subsidized film industries as a source of cheap pro¬
gramming, which in some cases can even return a profit. "In France in 1977,"
notes Charles Eidsvik in an article "The State as Movie Mogul," "while over
611 films attracted only 170 million theatrical viewers, ORTF (the state-
owned TV network) broadcast over 500 films, reaching over four billion view¬
ers. ORTF paid an average of $30,000 per film; each film reached an average
of nearly eight million viewers— at around three-eights of a cent, American,
per head." In Italy RAI backed PADRE PADRONE and THE TREE OF THE WOODEN
CLOGS, both of which brought the television network considerable profits
from theatrical release at home and abroad.

By and large, public TV in this country has used British productions as

a cheap source of tele-films and tele-dramas, availing itself of BBC exper¬
tise as well as its salary scale, low even by English standards. PBS has
itself initiated a number of dramatizations--the ADAMS CHRONICLES and THE
SCARLET LETTER— inspired by British productions. With much of the funding
coming from NEH, they were undermined by an obsession with "authenticity"
at the expense of drama and the kind of red tape that belongs in corporate
bureaucracies, not television studios.

The Visions series, funded through the Corporation for Public Broadcast¬
ing, NEA, and the Ford Foundation, was instrumental in fomenting today's
independent movement. Funded by a seven million dollar consortium of
grants over a three-year period, the series developed over 100 scripts and
produced over 30 dramas, including more than 10 independent feature films.
Although financed largely through public monies, production was relatively
streamlined. In 1975, Robert Young, a film journalist who co-wrote NOTHING
BUT A MAN, received a Guggenheim Fellowship to write a screenplay for
ALAMBRISTAI Living among Mexican and American farmworkers in the Southwest,
by the following year he was filming on location. Equally important, his
work was assured of broadcast and publicity as well as critical attention.
Funding for the Visions series, however, was not renewed, and there is cur¬
rently no replacement although a proposal is being circulated within PBS to
encourage feature film production through "a partnership between federal
support, private investment, and other- than-public television distribution.'
Despite Bob Kanter's assertion that "PBS would like to become a catalyst
and facilitator for the production and distribution of independently-pro¬
duced feature films," plans remain, apparently, at the talking stage al¬
though local public television continues to be a major outlet for regional
productions. WNET's 1980 series Independent Focus seems to have marked an
important breakthrough for independents. Nevertheless, the controversy
over WNET's alleged censoring of political films--although some were even¬
tually shown--may well be a harbinger of further difficulties.

A major problem independents face is distribution. One of the premises
of the independents, says Schulberg, is that "the heartland is just as
hungry as people living in New York, Los Angeles, and Boston for the more
substantial fare" independents are trying to offer, and that "this silent
majority has been ignored by the media powers, corporations, and studios."
The latter command the vast financial resources that can turn a picture
into an event--they can blanket the country's shopping malls with the lat¬
est blockbuster and expend thousands, even millions, of dollars on adver¬
tising.

Independents cannot compete with such outlays. Yet the distribution of
films like WORD IS OUT, THE TRIALS OF ALGER HISS, NORTHERN LIGHTS and THE’
WAR AT HOME indicates that a theatrical audience does exist for so-called
"non-commercial" work. Filmmakers must learn the ropes of self-distribu-
tion--how to target "primary audiences" and grassroots organizations likely
to support a film, how to develop promotional strategies that will generate
free and effective publicity.

Independent feature filmmaking is at a crossroads. The talent is there.
So are the ideas. There is also an audience. Today's independents, says
Schulberg, are "making films that come from the body politic," "hand¬
crafted" rather than "corporatized" visions of an America "ignored by those
in power." The independents' demand for increased funding, together with
their insistence on greater access to the filmgoing audience, is essential
to build a significant alternative to Hollywood. But money alone cannot
guarantee this. The way the purse strings are controlled goes a long way
toward determining the final product, and the best-intentioned filmmaker
may find him/herself inadvertently "playing it safe" under the benevolent
aegis of endowment- style organizations. What is needed is a thorough re¬
vamping of current media programs, and the creation of subsidy programs
that will foster a cinema where "independent" means, not simply "low budget"
or "non-commercial", but "alternative."

HEARTLAND: NEH Funding

HEARTLAND, the pilot of a dramatic series about 19th century pioneer
women, was funded in toto by NEH. As such, it is a milestone in the esca¬
lating movement among independents for government subsidies. A report by
Annicic Smith, the film's executive producer, for the Independent Feature
Project suggests some of the drawbacks of NEH funding. She also reveals
why it takes so long--in this case, three years— to produce a single 95-
minute film.

"In the summer of 1976, while producing a series of documentaries on
Northwest Indians, I became friends with Beth Ferris, a wildlife filmmaker
who also lived in Missoula. We decided... to work together on a series
about women and wilderness. In the course of seeking funds I approached
NEH's Public Media Program. At that time they were interested in develop¬
ing historical, biographical programming for PBS. They encouraged us to
submit a proposal for a series about historical women on the frontier.

"We immediately began three months of preliminary research and slowly
put together a well -documented proposal for a research, writing, and deve¬
lopment grant. We contacted well-known historians, writers, archivists,
and media professionals to serve as consultants. Since we were relatively
unknown filmmakers with no institutional ties, we decided to apply to NEH

JUMP CUT NO. 28

through the University of Montana's Wilderness Institute--a nonprofit organ¬
ization with grant administering experience. We submitted the proposal in
November 1976 and received approval frqm NEH in March 1977.

"In retrospect, we would have been wiser to form our own company then,
rather than later, and apply for the grant as independent producers. . .The
problem we had with the University was one of ownership and copyright as
well as red tape. NEH automatically gives copyright of grant-produced
material to the official recipients of a grant, no matter who runs it or
whose idea it is. In any case, after considerable legal negotiations, we
began the official research stage in June 1977, with an $82,500 grant."

The filmmakers devoted the next year to researching primary source mater¬
ial and selecting the seven women to be featured in the series. A pre-pro¬
duction plan, including budget, for a pilot film was drawn up, and a direc¬
tor and co-producer chosen. Consulting with research associates and advis¬
ors, the filmmakers narrowed down the list of subjects to two women and
settled on a treatment on Wyoming homesteader Elinore Stewart to be the
pilot script.

"From March to June we completed the research, two scripts and a produc¬
tion plan. In June we submitted a proposal to NEH for pilot film produc¬
tion and additional writing and development money. This included script,
budget, talent and time plan."

Four months later, a $600,000 grant came through to produce a feature-
length pilot film on Elinore Stewart. It did not include further writing
and development funds. Thus, while the filmmakers were fortunate in get¬
ting the opening segment produced, the time and effort (to say nothing of
public monies) expended on researching, scripting and developing the over¬
all series were effectively wasted.

NORTHERN LIGHTS: Self distribution

NORTHERN LIGHTS is an example of how imaginative self-distribution can
work. "Instead of opening in New York, getting reviews, moving to the big¬
gest cities in the country, and gradually spreading out to the medium-sized
cities," writes John Hanson in his paper— "It's a Nice Little Movie, But It
Isn't Commercial "—"we did exactly the opposite. The World Premiere was...
in Crosby, North Dakota, a town of 1800 people and the major location for
the filming of NORTHERN LIGHTS. We played in the Dakota Theatre on Main
Street... and broke the house record."

In the following months, the filmmakers and associate producer Sandra
Schulberg criss-crossed the state promoting the film in "what amounted to a
grassroots political campaign." Working with volunteers, they did mailings,
spoke before meetings of Sons of Norway, Senior Citizens, Democratic-NPL
lunches, high school and college classes, appeared on talk shows, put to¬

gether radio and TV spots, organized gala opening night c'eremonies and re¬
ceptions.

"All this represented a tremendous breakthrough because no one else had
ever done anything like this for an independent feature film in this coun¬
try, and we were proving that it was viable, at least on home turf." The
movie, Hanson adds, also made money.

Minneapolis, the first test of a' wider market, "represented a quantum
leap as far as the time and energy that it took to open the film." The
filmmakers contacted Scandinavians, political groups, cooperatives, farm
organizations, labor groups, schools, film societies— "every conceivable
interest group that might embrace the film." Opening night was a sellout,
and for the first couple of weeks the film did well. However, blizzards on
consecutive weekends, the winter holiday season, and the opening of big
pictures like LORD OF THE RINGS kept receipts down. Despite a $4500 share
of the box office take, the $6000 they had spent to open the film meant
that the filmmakers lost money while distributors in Los Angeles remained
wary of a film with no sex, no stars, and few prospects of making money.

A ten-page article in Mother Jones led to an invitation to the Belgrade
Film Festival where NORTHERN LIGHTS beat out American entries like THE DEER
HUNTER and A WEDDING to take third place. "We sold the film to Yugoslav TV<
had renewed interest from other European countries, and began to develop an
international reputation."

Meanwhile, Seattle exhibitor Randy Finlay took a gamble on opening the
film at a small art house near the University and Scandinavian community of
Ball-ard. Giving themselves six weeks to lay the groundwork and with the
support of a first-rate publicist, the filiranakers launched a campaign
similar to the one they had organized in Minneapolis. This time, however,
they received "tremendous media coverage" and "had a real word of mouth
going before the film opened." "According to our time-tested strategy,
we organized an opening night gala and held a benefit for the Norse Home.

The opening night benefit has become one of the keys to our distribution
plan, the use of a benefit for a community organization or group of people
who can identify with the film, use it as a tool, because after all the
reason we make films is for them to be used and seen by as many people as
possible."

The seven-week Seattle run, grossing nearly $35,000, "gave the film a
real legitimacy for other exhibitors. We were now having a good run with
a strong audience, good response, good reviews, the box office written up
in Variety each week."

Once again Europe beckoned. Accepted by the "Semaine de la Critique," a
prestigious part of the Cannes Film Festival, NORTHERN LIGHTS walked off
with the prize for Best First Feature Film, an award that helped clinch
$75,000 in European theatrical and television sales. This coupled with a
growing domestic box office, led to bookings at art theatres in San Fran¬
cisco, Boston, and Los Angeles. _

Talking to the D.E.C. Films Collective

W£ DON’T HAVE
FILMS YOU CAN EAT’

--Margaret Cooper

A unique Cariadian phenomenon, DEC Films grew
out of the Development Education Centre, an
independent, non-profit collective established
in 1971 by New Left activists and researchers
interested in providing alternative educational
perspectives on Canada, the Third World and a
wide range of contemporary issues. DEC Films
forms an integral part of the Toronto-based
collective which houses a reference library and
a bookstore and produces books, radio programs,
slide-tape shows and community workshops. It
has become the leading distributor of progres¬
sive films in English-speaking Canada since its
founding in 1974. Over the past seven years,
it has upheld an uncompromising commitment to
distribute films about social and political
struggles throughout the world as well as ac¬
comodate the legitimate needs of national in¬
dependent filmmaking which critically documents
and analyzes Canadian reality.

The following conversation between three mem¬
bers of the DEC collective and Margaret Cooper,
a film progratimer and freelance writer in
Toronto, took place over a two year-period in
an ongoing dialogue about the work of DEC Films,
its distinctive role in English-speaking Canada,
and its responsibilities toward independent left
Canadian filmmaking.

Margaret Cooper: When you compare DEC Films
to most independent distributors, your begin¬
nings seem exceptional. Film acquisition cer¬
tainly wasn't your primary concern, was it?

Jonathan Forbes; Hardly. As a resource col-
lective, DEC had been surveying books and pamph¬
lets and doing research on Canada's relationship
with Third World countries. In 1974, no Canadian
film distributors handled the kind of Third World
materials we needed. For our work, we had to
import Third World films from the U.S. and not
only had difficulty getting these films up but
faced prohibitive shipping and customs costs.

To have films at our disposal, we were actually
forced into becoming distributors.

Feme Cristall : DEC Films started out with a
small grant for Third World films from the
Canadian International Development Agency, which

had money to do educational work on developing
nations. After that initial seed money, we
became self-supporting. We don't, can't, rely
on grants for funding.

MC: Even commercial distributors who are free
of U.S. affiliation have a rough time in Canada.
How has it been possible for you to keep going
for seven years?

JF: The Centre had already developed a net¬
work with its educational work and distributing
printed material. We also filled a real need for
films since universities and political or com¬
munity groups were tired of having to go to the
U.S. for them. We started our collection slowly
and developed it film by film. For every film
we got, we mapped out where it could be used and
how we would distribute it.

MC: Who were your users at the outset?

Glenn Richards: Basically the same as now,
with a division between institutions and com¬
munity groups. We can distribute regularly in
institutions because certain sectors in schools
and universities, for example, have a continuing
interest in such films. Outside this area,
people often use films for educational work in
a particular community, or for different kinds
of public screenings. In DEC Films's early
years, some public screenings first interested
people in our collection. One major series
providing us with a local base was organized at
the University of Toronto by the Toronto Commit¬
tee for the Liberation of Southern Africa in 1975.
They showed many of our films for the first time
here and word spread that we had films. In a
sense, the network built on itself.

JF: The network also developed beyond Toronto
as we did teacher workshops in northern Ontario
mostly at the high school level but also for some
community colleges. We'd have, for example, a
two day workshop for our films and written mate¬
rials. We'd also provide a speaker and show the
teachers the available resources. Toronto seemed
to us well served by different groups; nobody
ever went to the smaller cities in the north.

These places had no contact with a resource cen¬
ter, so we'd go up, help develop curriculum and
show our films. Also teachers would invite out¬

side community people to evening screenings.

FC: Our distribution grew with a strong edu¬
cational orientation--which it still has.

MC: But you're more focused than other edu¬
cational distributors. And you do outreach work
which actively responds to the needs of different
communities and groups.

Right. We contact community groups and
trade unions as a regular part of our workshops
and trips outside Toronto. Sometimes we hook up
with community activists for a trip. A few
years ago, a collective member and a person who
worked with Native Canadians went across the
country with a car and a projector, stopping
in small communities for screenings. They en¬
couraged people to use our material and showed
how the material could be used--something un¬
familiar to a lot of people who had seen only
people going to cinemas or high school classes
showing films. To use a film differently in
a community setting seemed unusual, in the mid-
70s in many parts of Canada.

That process is still going on but since then
there have been some marked changes. Now com¬
munity groups from all over use our films fairly
regularly. Furthermore, they used to look for
something to suit a specific interest, but now
they draw from other subject areas which raise
social and cultural questions we'd like to see
presented in a clearer context. People are
still learning how to use the material, but with
broadened choices.

MC: To what extent have you influenced their
receptivity to a broader selection of films?

JF: A lot. And out of necessity, because
there's still not enough film material specific
to Canada. We draw analogies between a group's
particular situation and the materials we have.

MC: For example, you'd encourage a women's
caucus from a particular Canadian union to use
ROSIE THE RIVETER or BABIES AND BANNERS for
historical examinations of women's role in
the work force.

GR: Yes. Or someone interested in a parti-

JUMP CUT NO. 28

DEUE NATION t Canada, 2979
Producer: Rene Fumoleau

cu.lar industry— let's say, potash in Saskatche-
wan--might not find anything available on the
subject but could use CONTROLLING INTEREST, which
explores international and domestic relations in
a major industry and shows how large companies
control huge markets and offer workers low wages.

FC; A good speaker in the right setting can
draw specific connections for Canadian users.

Our role as distributors then makes us facili¬
tators as well.

MC: How do you decide which films to pick up,
especially the foreign films in your collection?

JF; We argue a lot. Every time a film comes
in, we argue on the basis of its usefulness and
cost. We're still too marginal to be able to
spend much money.

GR: Some films take precedence because of
need or the subject's accessibility. Years
ago we picked up the Swedish film TUPAMAROS
partly to combat local press reports about
Tupamaros as bloodthirsty terrorists. Yet
sometime later we didn't take a film on East
Timor, even though the Canadian media also
distorted that liberation struggle. The film
was just of too poor quality, not very informa¬
tive, and with only a limited application.

Taking on that kind of film would have been a
luxury.

FC: When we acquire films, content plays a
prime role. But we want creatively made films,
which say something about issues through their
form. But we have to make choices on the basis
of available money.

GR: On the one hand, we have a definite need
to do something; on the other hand, we know our
financial responsibilities and liabilities. If
the two are incompatible, we could not do the
things we really need to and would do a disser¬
vice to the people we're trying to support--
whether they're involved in liberation struggles
abroad or whether they're doing things here.

FC: We place a priority on producer reports
and sending money back to producers. Most of
our contract agreements stipulate producers
receive 50% of net income. That was a political
choice for us. Just as we're distributors working
in adverse conditions, so are most of the film¬
makers we work with, or who use us as their
Canadian distributor. We know they need some
income to continue doing what they're doing. So
we keep our other costs down. Salaries— we all
draw the same--stay pretty low, and we do our
catalogues as economically as possible.

THE CLEAN SWEEP (LA GRAND REMU-MENAGE)
Quebec, 1978

Producere: Sylvie Groulx, Francine Allaire

GR: This small collective, twelve people,
operates on many levels, all collectively, and
cannot do what other people have to do, such as
form support groups for liberation struggles.

We are out to make the most of resources which
can raise consciousness.

JF: For example, we've started working with
INCTNE in Nicaragua and Comu-Nica in New York
to do English versions of some Nicaraguan news¬
reels and documentaries.

MC: So you acquire films to fill already
existing needs.

GR: Also to move into areas which the groups
and communities we service have not fully explored,
such as cultural questions. Over the past two
years, we've been qettinq films in this area,
such as the West German film, JOHN HEARTFIELD
—PHOTOMONTAG I ST.

FC: HEARTFIELD represented a conscious
decision to break into new territory.

GR: As we tried to define areas in which
to expand, we felt a need to deal with the
cultural aspect of people's lives concretely.

A film like HEARTFIELD counters the Hitler
nostalgia vogue with little known information
about an antifascist artist and his work, and
at the same time explores the process of his
art. Since getting HEARTFIELD, we've moved
into features like NORTHERN LIGHTS and WOBBLIES,
and culturally based shorts which deal with
social and political problems, like DREAD BEAT
AN' BLOOD, the British film about Linton Kwesi
Johnson.

MC: Has the "expanded territory" changed
your user situation? Certainly the films you've
just mentioned can work in a variety of settings
for different purposes. I can easily see DREAD
BEAT used with reggae features.

FC: We've had an increase in public screenings,
with libraries, film societies, even museims
making more use of our films.

MC: This probably has some connection with an
interest in the independent feature and feature
documentary movement. As part of a collective,
you have to consider DEC as a whole in your
decisions— such as moving into feature or cul¬
tural subjects. How does the entire collective
participate in the film section's activities?

JF: Obviously other DEC members use the films,
quTtie often in educational s. That's the most
direct contact.

GR: Also people from the rest of the collec¬
tive sit on the acquisitions committee to select
films.

FC: That's a working committee, not just for
decision-making.

.It tries to call in as many people as
possible to test reactions to a film we're
thinking of picking up, including people out¬
side the collective who have an interest in the
film's subject. For a film about Jamaica, let's
say, we'll invite people from Toronto's Jamaican
community as well as knowledgeable non-Jamaicans
to a screening to discuss that film's potential
use.

JF: We also get tips about films as people
in the extended collective as well as people
outside DEC come across something they think
would be appropriate for us.

GR: Once a week we all meet to discuss what
we're doing on a day-to-day and long-term basis,
so there's a dynamic relationship with the entire
collective. To some extent the collective's
activities are integrated; to some extent they're
separate. All the administrative work with
the film collection— cleaning, shipping, booking,
accounting— that's our responsibility. But every¬
body has the responsibility to do the Centre's
work. Each of us spends a week doing front desk,
answering the phone, and opening mail. If one
of us goes to another province, that person will
check out radio stations to see if any of our
books interest people there. There's a give and
take all the way. With the films, the collective
takes a serious look at what we propose and then
participates in the general discussion.

MC: You distribute many films which are not
avaTlable elsewhere in Canada. Do you try to
make sure that people don't book films and then
use them in ways that are diametrically opposed
to your goals and the purpose of the films?

GR: In one case, a military institute wanted
to~5bok a Latin American film. Obviously, we
did not give it to them. The thing is... we're
trying to provide a certain kind of education
but we cannot maintain total control over it.

What if someone buys a print, let's say, of
THE TRIPLE A, the anti-junta film about the
effects of the '76 coup in Argentina, and uses
it as an example of leftist progaganda film?

MC: Or if some local white racists try to
show DREAD BEAT to warn against Toronto Blacks.

FC: I think misuse like that rarely happens.
Remember we know our network and we're talking
about a pretty small market within a small popu¬
lation. Canada is geographically huge, but
there are only about 17 million English-speaking
Canadians.

GR: With some of the recent acquisitions, of
course, there's less danger of misuse. Also

films like ROSIE THE RIVETER or HEARTFIELD speak
for themselves. You can disagree with what they
say but you can't dismiss them. Users will have
different approaches to our material but I can't
overemphasize the fact that we don't have films
you can eat. You can try, but they'll give you
indigestion.

MC: I know that you encourage open, active
screenings for your films whenever possible.

Do you also encourage an active demystification
of film and filmmaking in these situations?

FC: We've considered it an important role to
teach some of our users film technology— even
at the most primitive level, such as how to
handle a print or what to do when the film
breaks. In some cases, with community groups
we've been able to get into what makes a parti¬
cular film work and how it does what it does.

GR: We have different backgrounds in relation
to film. I got interested in film and filmmaking
as an art student before I became involved in
politics. For Jonathan and Feme, it was the
reverse: they were politicized first. We've
grown to put the two together— to put film¬
makers in touch with the people who use their
films and vice versa; to present a film and
discuss what is in the film and how such a film
is made. You know, the whole thing: what the
filmmaker wanted to do, what happened to the
film afterwards, or how to creatively present
ideas through certain forms. For example, in
Film Forums we helped sponsor in Toronto in
1975, we started out with local filmmakers and
invited them to participate in discussions with
the audience. The next year, when we had access
to some Chilean films for a weekend festival
which took place at a downtown repertory house,
the Lumiere, we got Chileans who'd been involved
with film work to take part in the discussions.

At that time we were part of a network which
Andre Paquet had helped set up from Montreal
with tours for foreign filmmakers from Third
World countries. So we managed to work with
films not yet in Canadian distribution.

MC: Since the mid-70s Toronto seems to have
had a consistently good audience for public
screenings of Latin American films— mainly
because of the impact of Latin American refu¬
gees on the city's activists and its politici¬
zed left. I know that the same hasn't been
true for domestic-issue films, such as films
about organized labor and Canadian workers. Was
this the case with your Forums involving labor
films?

JF: Yes. The programs oriented toward
unions and working people were the least well
attended.

FC: Also when our film section started in
1974 and began these forums we were pretty in¬
experienced in our contacts with unions. Only
a few years later, after we'd really developed
our collection of films on labor and work, did
unions begin using our films and become aware
of the extent of our resources. Trying to do
educational s within the context of organized
labor has also helped us increase union access.

JF: It's taken time to build this part of
our network. Much of the labor movement in
English-speaking Canada has been tied to the New
Democratic Party (a minority opposition party
with a moderate Social Democrat orientation),
and we're not affilated with the NDP or with
any party. Unions mistrusted us at the beginning
because we couldn't be placed. We weren't
affiliated but an independent group.

MC: Some of your films also critique business
union practices and U.S. domination of Canadian
industrial unions, so I don't suppose they go
over too well in certain sectors of organized
labor. But as a trade unionist I can certainly
see a real need for some of these films among the
indigenous Canadian unions as well as among the
reform groups in other unions.

FC: That kind of interest is really picking
up now and should become stronger as we develop
this part of our collection.

MC: How easy is it for you to get the films
you want?

Ten years ago, compared to Europe, Canada
was quite wealthy, although not now. People
still assume there's lots of money here. We have
to explain that we have a small market scattered
across an Immense area, and for most of the films,
shipping charges use up almost half the rental.

We do try to develop a good relationship with
our filmmakers, who then can tell other film¬
makers that we've done well by them over the
years but that we can't pay a lot for films.

GR: In theory, we understand that filmmakers
want to maximize the potential of their films
and push Internationally for non-exclusive
distribution contracts. But Canadian audi¬
ences can't always support more than one distri¬
butor for progressive left films. If you diver¬
sify the market too much, you create fragmen¬
tation which prevents Canadian distributors
from making a go of It. So we have to get the
Canadian distributor's side of the story out
for our contracts on foreign films.

MC: I think your point's well taken but I
also believe that Canadians can support more
than one distributor for films which have a wide
circulation. Especially if a distributor has
only a few prints of these films and print damage
from extensive use may result in the shelving of
some prints. Between here and the west coast,
there should be room for two distributors for

JUMP CUT NO. 28

some films, don't you think?

JF: Actually, that's already happened.

Idera, in British Columbia has decided that to
be a viable film distributor, they have to be
able to distribute outside their province.

They have agreed to raise their rates to give
a fair return to the filmnaker and now we're
looking at getting joint exclusive with them on
distributing a number of films accross Canada.

FC: A few films we're getting now have con¬
tracts saying, "Exclusive joint distribution
with Idera if interested."

MC: Will you be splitting up geographic areas?

JF: No, the distribution is open at this point.
Athirst we thought there was room for only one
distributor, right? And now we know there's
room for two. Since other people in the Western
provinces are beginning to consider being distri¬
butors, we have to consider the problem of
whether we're going to have one distributor in
the West or whether there's going to be regional
distribution.

FC: Another problem is getting English-language
films. Arrangements with American and British
and Australian distributors take time. It's also
tough to initiate acquisitions when we find a
file we'd like to have which isn't in an English-
language version.

GR: In getting films through the U.S., you're
also talking about a lot of Third World films.

The U.S. distributors have internegatives which
we can draw cm, whereas in Europe you have to
buy into an interneg. So there it costs maybe
twice as much to start — and the cost is prohibi¬
tive.

I i A'A I

w o •:

■ t

UNE HISTOIRE DE FEMMES/A WIVES ' TALE^ Canada/Quebec, 1980
Producers: Sophie Bissonnette, Mcoptin Duckworth, Joyce Rock

MC: Outside of print sales to schools and
public libraries, you don't have access to some
of the sales areas that would help expand the
audience for your films while also bringing
in money. English-lanuage TV, for example, sees
itself well served by government-produced films—
whether it's a case of the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation airing its own productions or airing
work acquired from the National Film Board.

FC: The NFB, that sacred cow, is well re¬
spected in many countries because it subsidizes
filmmakers. But the NFB has a strong bias.

And it creates serious problems for indepen¬
dents and totally cuts out people trying to work
like us. The NFB sells its films for the cost
required to make the print, so people rent or
buy NFB films because of the low rates. Some
libraries even have to buy a certain number of
NFB films to meet a quota.

GR: In some areas the library system and the
NFB distribution system are one and the same.

JF: People phone up and say, "Why should I
pay $50 to rent such-and-such film when I can
get one just like it for free from the Film
Board?"

GR: Only it isn't "just like it." Distinc¬
tions become blurred because of people's finan¬
cial concerns. A school board can acquire
fifty films from the NFB for the same price
that they can get twenty from us, so they expand
their collection from the Film Board, a state-
run monopoly.

JF: Young filmmakers become co-opted as they
go to the Board for steady work, where nine out
of ten films they'll, make at the Board are made
specifically for government agencies or private
corporations which subsidize the NFB budget. To
top it all off, the NFB has a ready-made distri¬
bution network, with offices abroad, which can
carry on circulation of the films.

FC: The NFB does subsidize some filmmakers
doing independent work, but the percentage is
extremely small.

MC: What about the reputation built up by
the now defunct Challenge for Change program?

That was supposed to bring filmmaking to the
people.

GR: Its "radically innovative approach"
duplicated early work done in the Soviet Union
with the Kino train. And in reality it addressed
itself largely to middle class concerns, even
though it sometimes dealt with isolated examples
of working class individuals or people on welfare.
It went, for example, to small towns and showed
that people had no sewer system. Middle class
people got together, made a videotape and pres¬
sured a government agency so that the town got
a sewer system. But Challenge for Change
wouldn't deal with the social reality of issues
like massive unemployment in the Mari times.

JF: The NFB won't even do a historical film,
lil« UNION MAIDS, which is analytical and criti¬
cal and open-ended. It never will, but it will
keep the people who would busy with other
projects.

FC: And it gets those people attuned to a
seamless style of social documentary, a style
that pervades English-language production at
the Board even in the best films. The English
productions travel most. The French section
has a very different history and quite often
does rather different work, so it doesn't really
figure in here.

GR: The NFS's good films have been done
despite the Film Board, which even at the start
had a social democratic position on the working

class. It allied itself completely with what¬
ever government happened to be in power in this
country.

To get back to Challenge for Change, look at
THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE, one of the earliest
films in the program, about a Montreal welfare
recipient who couldn't make ends meet. When
the film was shown abroad, foreign audiences
thought it was wonderful that a state-run film
institution would make a film about poverty,
but in fact, when you use the film in a
Canadian context, all you create is a sense
of pessimism.

We don't have a real solution but we know that
for a long time the NFB has been taking Canadian
filmmakers who might be making the kind of films
we can distribute— films on the order of some of
the recent documentaries made by independents in
the States— and turning them into uncritical
creators of seamless films.

MC: You've just brought up a most pressing
issue for Canadian distributors: developing an
independent film tradition with a progressive
orientation in English-speaking Canada.

GR: It has something to do with the state of
the Canadian left. The fact that social demo¬
cracy is stronger here than, let's say, in the
United States actually creates more problems for
us than it solves.

MC: We have a national tendency to breed
"grant junkies." People outside the country,
especially in the United States where government
funding at the federal and state levels came in
only recently and is now on its way out, look
North and think things are wonderful here because
we have federal grants for independent filmmakers
through the Canada Council and we have arts
council grants in each province. Sure, they're
a big help, even if there's less money now than
there was a few years ago, but they can also
work to our disadvantage. Some people, film¬
makers with a good sense of film form, spend
more time on grant applications than on films;
and others draw a complete blank at the prospect
of facing some other way to finance their work.
Ultimately, it breeds a kind of "grant- itis"
which isn't always compatible with promoting
social change.

JF: We're not sustained by grants, and few
of the Canadians whose films we distribute have
been able to depend on them exclusively.

MC: As "mavericks," how do you view yoyr
role in helping to promote or develop indepen¬
dent left filmmaking? Do you think that money
could be generated independently for the kind
of films we've been talking about?

FC: That depends. If you decide, for example,
to make a film on work, it's not likely that a
union will offer support unless you make the
film for a union. At least, not in the same way
that U.S. independents have managed to get union
money for some of their films.

JF: What about A WIVE'S TALE?

FC: One of the most interesting things about
the film was the way in which organized labor,
women's groups and individuals across the
country worked together to help its production.

MC: What A WIVE'S TALE had going for it from
the start, I think, was a subject which touched
a lot of people. The 1978 INCO strike was one
of the most important labor struggles in recent
history and it raised issues which became well
known across the country.

JF : That's why we made it one of our projects
and spent time working with the filmmakers to
reach different community groups and individuals
to fund the film.

FC: Now we're trying to help with inter¬
national distribution.

MC: Here's a demonstration of active collab¬
oration between distributors and filmmakers to
promote what needs to be done.

FC: We've wanted to do that, and A WIVE'S
TALE gave us the opportunity. Obviously we'd
get involved because we'd already been involved
with the Sudbury community where the strike took
place. DEC published a book written by a col¬
lective member, about INCO's involvement in
Sudbury called The Big Nickle. DEC also helped
produce a videotape about Sudbury and the strike
called WINDING DOWN, and had done workshops on
the strike. We knew the filmmakers. It seemed
a logical extension to help with the film.

GR: It's also very close to our hearts at
DEC because it challenges fixed notions on the
left and in the trade unions from a socialist-
feminist perspective.

FC: To promote the film in Toronto promotion
meant arranging for one of the filmmakers to come
and work with us at a salary to do the premiere
showings here. We also involved local women's
organizations who'd supported the making of
the film to get them to incorporate the film in
their work.

GR: A WIVE'S TALE gave us our first taste of
a different kind of public exhibition and also
provided insight into new ways to promote our
films and involve community groups in public
exhibition. The people who run a downtown
cinema made their theatre available for four
screenings over a two-week period. The first
week the film played to pretty skimpy audi¬
ences. But by the second week, people lined
up outside the theatre. We now feel confident
that more of our films can have the same effect
if we actively involve our audience.

MC: Without the Festival cinema, which has a
central location and is one of the few indepen¬
dently owned theatres in town, I don't think
you'd have done as well.

JF: Having access to a screen and getting
good projection in a theatre space for public
exhibition present real problems for us.

MC: You mean on an ongoing basis. A theatre
like the Festival can't really afford to depart
too much from regular art house programming be¬
cause after all, it's caught up in its c
struggle bucking U.S. chains and block-bookings
of U.S. products.

GR: Ideally we'd like a community cultural
center.

FC: That's how we envision DEC in the future.
We have a library, a bookstore and videotape
facilities. Having a small cinema nearby or on
the premises would be a natural development.

GR: Especially since we're planning to do
more public screening on the order of what we
started last winter with our "Reel to Real"
series.

JF: That grew out of our experience with A
WIVE'S TALE.

FC: When we started thinking of "Reel to Real"
as a new cinema of solidarity project, we thought
it would be exciting. We chose the films from
new acquisitions, things we felt deserved theat-

JUMP CUT NO. 28

n'cal presentation, and approached the same cin¬
ema we'd used for A WIVE'S TALE about renting
the theatre for ten Sunday afternoons. Then we
went to groups whom we thought would have spe¬
cific interests in the films: an alternative
cultural magazine, a left community newspaper,
a Native Canadian school, the International
Women's Day Committee, an inner city Black acti¬
vist band and a research group which publishes
material on Latin America. All of the groups
became really keen on the project. We met
regularly to plan the series and then promoted
it collectively and individually. DEC did a
newsprint flyer for the entire series and each
group did a separate flyer for its program, with
probably 15000 promotional flyers circulating
around Toronto as dropoffs and mailings.

GR: A good example would be the BLACKS
BRITANNICA and DREAD BEAT AN' BLOOD screening.

It was a mixed media presentation because the
sponsoring group, the Guyap Rhythm Drummers,
performed as well. Then the Guyap talked about
the problems presently facing Toronto's Black
and West Indian communities.

JF: As a cultural event, it had a real polit¬
ical focus. The films deal with the oppression
of Blacks in Britain, and the Drummers had re¬
cently been harassed and raided by the city
police.

FC: There were other developments from our
work with the Guyap which had positive results.
The two publications which sponsored other
screenings in the series came into contact with
the Drummers at one of our planning sessions and
eventually did feature stories on their problems
with the police.

MC: So the series brought together some com¬
mon interest groups who may have been previously
working in isolation from each other.

GR: And it developed more community contacts
for us. The spinoff is the number of people who
have seen the films in the cinema setting and
then have gone on to use some of the films them¬
selves in other public settings. Other groups
who don't have financial resources are starting
to pressure public libraries to purchase prints
from us, which would mean that free library
prints will be accessible to people we can't
serve because we have to charge rentals.

MC: What about the economics of "Reel to
ReaT"? Did the series pay for itself?

FC: The theatre rental and fees for house
manager and projectionist came to $300 each
Sunday. One half of that amount came off
the top of the gate. From what remained, 50%
went to the sponsoring group. With the rest
DEC paid its own film rentals, the other half
of the cinema rental, and the production of
the series flyer.

MC: Did the series break even?

GR: Not completely, if you consider that we
eventually lost about $340. The. sponsoring
groups did pretty well, however, when you con¬
sider they didn't have any cash outlay.

MC: What about your own labor? How did
that figure in?

FC: We put a hell of a lot of time and
energy into "Reel to Real" and didn't get any
financial return on it. So in a sense, none
of our labor costs were covered and the
amount of time we put into the series did make
our other distribution work suffer. During the
winter, for example, we received a number of
new films which we weren't able to promote as
well as we'd have wanted.

GR: The problem with "Reel to Real" was the
same problem which has often come up with simi¬
lar short-term projects. It was difficult to
get a coordinating committee to carry out the
work we could do because of our experience.

For one thing, the sponsoring groups did not
usually work full-time as groups, and their
members had outside jobs. Or else the groups
formed volunteer ad hoc committees. It was
right for us as the facilitators to do what
we did. But financially, over a four-month
period the additional work load became a real
burden.

MC: When you do this kind of program again,
will you consider getting paid for your labor?

GR: Yes. Now that something like "Reel to
Real" has shown it can work, sponsoring organi¬
zations may be willing to share the finances.

As it was, some of the groups involved had
absolutely no money, and they were uneasy about
raising, let's say, $150, for the whole thing
might go bust and nobody come. None of us knew
what was going to happen.

JF: Remember, we conceived "Reel to Real"

and started organizing it not more than

eight weeks before the series started.

MC: Are there other lessons from "Reel
to Real"?

JF: Well, we got a heavy dose of the
anxTeties which plague people who program
regular public screenings, especially over
equipment breakdowns.

GR: The more sparsely attended screenings
showed which groups presently do not have a
broad community base.

MC: We were talking earlier about ways of
promoting critical left tradition in Canadian
independent film. To my way of thinking,

"Reel to Real" was a good way of getting film
users to support the screenings and the films
in a fairly creative way. That kind of support
should encourage filmmakers here in their work.

GR: There was a much tighter integration of
users, distributors and, in the case of some of
the locally produced films like, DENE NATION or
FOR TWENTY CENTS A DAY, the filmmakers them¬
selves. It may even have implications for some
institutional film users across the country whose
financial resources are starting to dry up. May¬
be they should consider going directly to the
people who want to see films.

JF: DEC wants to work with people across the
country who can get communities to support these
films in public exhibition. When that's at the
integrated level as in "Reel to Real," audience
response can't help but encourage more filmmaking
activity.

FC: Especially if filmmakers build into this
network, like the people who made A WIVE'S TALE.
Actually, for DEC, this really just means a new
twist on what we started out doing years ago.

Our collection has grown, our users have in¬
creased and diversified, and we've gone through
a number of changes. It's a process that's
ongoing, but with ? basic consistency as to what
we do and how we do it. It will be exciting to
see what happens next.

WE ARE THE GUINEA PIGS

Three Mile Island
Continues

--Doug Eisenstark

WE ARE THE GUINEA PIGS is a recent documentary
film directed by Joan Harvey about the nuclear
power industry, the nuclear arms race, and spe¬
cifically about the Three Mile Island accident
in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The film opens
with the residents of Harrisburg telling about
the events surrounding the accident. The film
then moves to interviews and statements by nu¬
clear power proponents and antinuclear trade
unionists and scientists. As well as nuclear
power, these speakers often address the nuclear
arms race and its relationship to the government
and utility companies. A kind of filmic debate •
is made possible by intercutting the different
interviews with each other. This editing is
often quite quick, and the less-than-consistent
film quality makes viewing the film somewhat
tiring. Interspersed throughout the film is a
rock band. Fourth Wall Repertory, whose anti¬
nuclear lyrics presumably reflect the film¬
maker's own views.

WE ARE THE GUINEA PIGS begins with the subjec¬
tive accounts of Harrisburg residents. These
testimonies tell of radiation sickness, plant
and animal life dying, and of mutations and de¬
formities occurring in livestock after the near
melt-down of the Metropolitan Edison power plant.
Many of the interviews are with young parents,
often times shown holding their children. They
tell of the illnesses their kids have suffered
and the hopelessness they feel when faced with
the mass of contradictory information they have
been given. A local pediatrician expresses how
difficult it is to tell parents that their chil¬
dren are contaminated with radiation at a dan¬
gerously high level .

The most articulate speaker in the first sec¬
tion of the film is a ten-year-old boy who grim¬
ly gives the facts of his illness at the time of
the accident. He makes comparisons to the offi¬
cial estimates of what a "safe" illness is. The
government says he "safely" could have been sick
with radioactive iodine for an hour but he remem¬
bers his symptoms lasting for over eight hours.

He looks in the direction of the power plant and
says that he is worried. The danger to children,
who are more vulnerable to radiation than adults,
is not only one of dying during an accident or

in their lifetimes by the effects of cancer but
is also a danger of irreversible chromosomal
damage that may adversely affect .their children,
grandchildren, and succeeding generations. Chil¬
dren then are the most innocent victims of the
dangers of the nuclear industry. As one parent
says in the film about her preteen daughter,

"How do you tell her she can't have kids because
of Three Mile Island?"

The extent of the accident at Three Mile Island
has been consistently covered up from the first
day of the accident. WE ARE THE GUINEA PIGS
tells us that the accident was made known to the
public on that day only because an amateur radio
operator happened to be monitoring communications
from workers within the plant. WE ARE THE GUINEA
PIGS takes on the utility company experts and,
by intercutting their statements with those of
antinuclear activists, it shows that the Pennsyl¬
vania region and the rest of the world was and
continues to be dosed with radiation from Three
Mile Island. The film tells us that the power
plant is neither in cold shutdown nor in a dor¬
mant state but that it continues to emit radia¬
tion to this day.

At one point in the film Dr. Helen Caldicott
responds to a statement by a utility spokesper¬
son concerning the amount of radiation released
during the accident. She says that if this
radioactive chemical was released in the amounts
mentioned it would be enough to poison half of
the United States population lethally. Even now
the plant must often release radiation and even¬
tually rid itself of a million gallons of radio¬
active water. When gases are intentionally
leaked, it is often done secretively at night or
in the rain so that the radiation will not be
detected in the atmosphere but instead fall
quickly and heavily on the area surrounding Har¬
risburg. The danger from Three Mile Island con¬
tinues, and its contents will be lethal to life
forms for half a million years. Because another
accident at another power plant is almost cer¬
tain, the film rightfully argues that it is im¬
perative to close all nuclear facilities immedi¬
ately and begin to systematically decommission
them before more radioac.tive wastes are produced.

Halfway into the film a woman steelworker ap¬
pears briefly in what appears to be the middle

of a lucid and militant talk about profits, nu¬
clear power, and, explicitly named, capitalism.
Her statements are cut at this point and the
theme of profits but not capitalism is picked up
by John Goffman. Although the steelworker ap¬
pears again briefly, her rap has been quickly
diverted to what sounds like a consumer's dis¬
satisfaction with one particular product, nuclear
power. The film talks vaguely about profits and
"bringing control back to the people." It begins
but does not follow through on an anti capitalist
analysis that would place the nuclear industry
in economic and ideological terms and would ex¬
plain its sudden rise and relative "success."

In this way the film cannot address the existing
and future strategies needed to combat the cur¬
rent disastrous situation.

WE ARE THE GUINEA PIGS is an important film
that gives scientific but not necessarily polit¬
ical fuel to the antinuclear movement. The film
is clearly an antinuclear propaganda, informa¬
tional, and agitational vehicle; yet its useful¬
ness to activists and to those as yet unconvinced
remains questionable. The film fails to find a
core to build its argument from. Massive amounts
of scientific evidence are presented as well as
emotional first-hand testimony, economic analy¬
sis, and, for the musically inclined, a rock and
roll band. One feels that the film attempts a
comprehensive look at the nuclear industry by
showing something of everything. In a sense,
this scattershot approach is the result of the
many-faceted antinuclear movement, which is made
up of those doing scientific research, community
and labor organizing, and civil disobedience,
forming a loose political base. With its re¬
sources and access to these groups, WE ARE THE
GUINEA PIGS could have attempted to tie some of
these elements together in a cohesive manner.
Instead the film puts forward a liberal politics
and a manic Intensity as^ if we were discovering
the dangers of nuclear power for the first time.
This is unnecessary as most of the background
information is known to activists. For those
who are undecided about the issues, too much is
presented too fast for particular facts to be
retained. Unfortunately, the ninety-minute film
does little to convince us that documentaries
don't have to be boring and tedious. WE ARE THE
GUINEA PIGS can be seen as a complementary film
to the Green Mountain Post films, LOVEJOY'S NU-

JUMP CUT NO. 28

CLEAR WAR and THE LAST RESORT {Jim> CUT No. 12/13
and No. 24/25), wtiich present antinuclear acti¬
vism within a limited political context.

If WE ARE THE GUINEA PIGS has an overview, it
is that of the Fourth Wall rock band, which
moves politics into a poetic rage. The band is
shown at what appears to be a number of rallies
and benefits. I say "appears to be" because
these rallies are rarely pictured. This is also
true when Michio Kaku, John Goffman, Helen Caldi-
cott, or physicist Daniel Pesello is shown in¬
terviewed in the midst of a rally or seen ad¬
dressing an invisible crowd. The failure of the
camera to turn on its axis and show the politi¬
cal organizations necessary to combat the nucle¬
ar industry is to implicitly undercut their im¬
portance. In this way the film has placed it¬
self outside of the organizations. WE ARE THE
GUINEA PIGS seems to want to totalize the issues
in a way that must ignore political organizations,
which necessarily must be specific in their anal¬
ysis and objectives in order to be effective.
Perhaps if the film had attempted to integrate
the antinuclear movement within the film, the
audience could be given some sense of organiza¬
tional strength rather than once again having
the many experts paraded before us to decide our
fate.

When a ten-year-old kid can talk about the po¬
tential effects of radioactive iodine on his
body you know he didn't learn about it from Met¬
ropolitan Edison.

dramatic theme is black music, the struggle of
musicians against the exploitations of gangster
entrepreneurs. More subtly fulfilled than its
story is its visual exposition through musical
montage. Each sequence is introduced or seg¬
mented by music. Musical cues dominate its
architecture. Typically, in the middle of a
tenor saxaphone solo played by the protagonist,
Womack, the camera closes in on the bell of the
horn, which becomes an iris perspective, framing
the documentary flashbacks mentioned earlier,
the dogs of Birmingham, black nationalist/police
shootout in Cleveland, Attica. Clark's montage
suggests visual references for the solo's non¬
verbal expression, offering a visual exegesis of
the way improvised jazz solos reflect individual
and group experience.

I AND I and PASSING THROUGH, together with the
briefer explorations of Barbara McCullough and
Hugh Hill, offer the widest, most far-reaching
illustrations of the integral relation of black
music and film. In these works, we recognize
the representative palette of the new black
filmmaker as a keyboard. The greater dimension
of performance in the identity of the African
and Afro-American artist also extends to the new
black filmmakers. We should visualize them as
shaping their compositions by selectively play¬
ing, with more or less emphasis, the available
elements of documentary realism, the several
modes of Afro oral tradition, musical structure
and coloration, and dramatic intention.

Two useful perspectives can be gained by view¬
ing the new black cinema as a creative "renc s-
sance." Some fruitful bearings can be found in
considering the recent film movement alongside
the Harlem Renaissance, the best-known art move¬
ment launched by black Americans. One is then
further drawn to the fundamental relatedness
between this body of films and other forms of
black art.

faddists, yet ironically remain mute when an
indigenous film movement emerges without benefit
of such dubious blessings.

Without the buoyancy of a vogue or the nostal¬
gia of an era consecrated in popular mythology,
the new black cinema has managed a transforma¬
tion of imaginative possibilities comparable in
scope, diversity, and creative verve to the lit¬
erary twenties. Over the last decade, Afro in¬
dependents have produced over two hundred films
of varied length, including a score of dramatic
features and an equal number of documentary fea¬
tures— an output rivaling the literary output of
the Harlem Renaissance.

The singular accomplishment of the literary
awakening of the 1920s was to establish an Afro-
American voice for literary art, the recreation
of a cultural identity in literary form, more
solidly in poetry than prose, and principally
through the reappropriation of Afro vernacular
in speech and music. The writers of that period
advanced a fertile decolonization from Western
aesthetic norms. Almost without notice, the
contemporary filmmakers have gone further toward
decolonization of a more blatantly colonized
medium. They have not only planted a new body
of Afro-American art, they have done this while
freeing that art of colonial imitation, apology,
or deference. And while the observations made
here fall far short of exhausting the character¬
istics that give these films their cultural
identity, they might point the way to the reali¬
zation that the new cinema, unlike any other, is
a representative expression of Afro-American
life.

^Arna Bontemps — Langston Hughes Letters, 1925-
1967, ed. Charles H. Nichols (New York: Dodd,
Mead & Co., 1980), p. 89.

The independent films of Afro-Americans since
the late 1960s, it should be clear by now, have
made a departure from all prior examples of
black imagery sharp enough to be considered a
distinct aesthetic phenomenon. History has not
favored the new film movement with a reverberat¬
ing social and artistic era in which it might
achieve its full resonance. Many Afro-Americans
have lamented the virtual adoption as pets of
the writers of the twenties by white patrons and

2lbid., p. 273.

^From a brochure in the files of the Schomburg
Library, New York City.

^Walter Benjamin, illuminations (New York:
Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968), p. 232.

^LewiS Jacobs, The Documentary Tradition (New
York: Norton, 1979), p. 187.

(Puerto Rico), Latin America, and Africa. SSD
II itself saw a disaster within the UN due to US
blocking, but large rallies on June 12 allowed
many groups to speak out against the US export
of nuclear and conventional arms.

Particular attention must be given to the
struggle of Native Americans in North America as
uranium deposits have been found in the South¬
west on Native American lands. Native Americans
will be forced to leave these lands for the ura¬
nium that will be destined for nuclear bombs in
Reagan's domestic military buildup or export to
foreign dictatorships for nuclear power plants.

The antinuclear movement has been progressing
politically to address the issues of imperialism
(concerning itself, for example, with uranium
mining in South Africa and on Native American
land in the USA) and workers' safety and jobs
both in nuclear plants and in the mines. The
United Mine Workers sponsored a demonstration in
Harrisburg mourning the second anniversary of
the Three Mile Island accident. The dominant
chant of the marchers that day was "No Nukes, No
Wars, US out of El Salvador!" Labor groups have
in the past and are continuing to organize
around nuclear issues. WE ARE THE GUINEA PIGS
interviews many labor leaders, which is in it¬
self a reflection of the antinuclear nrovement's
conscious attempts to reach beyond a middle-
class constituency. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
itself has a very strong antinuclear community.
Its effects are undoubtedly seen in the film as
the filmmakers interview a well-informed popu¬
lation.

liability for damages. Each of these power
plants must eventually be dismantled as they be¬
come so completely and thoroughly radioactive
that they are unserviceable. WE ARE THE GUINEA
PIGS does little more than make these and other
facts known. The means to a world free from the
nuclear nightmare remain unexplored. Despite
its complex form WE ARE THE GUINEA PIGS turns
out to have nothing more to say than a simple
slogan, but the message is both clear and power¬
ful: stop nuclear power and stop nuclear arma¬
ments!

Black cinema (from p.48

II III

There are over seventy nuclear plants in the
United States alone. The nuclear industry and
the government have been pushing nuclear plants
abroad as a way to stabilize the sagging indus¬
try here. In the 1950s the electric industries
were unwilling to invest in nuclear technologies
but were essentially bribed by the government,
which needed nuclear plants to produce nuclear
arms. The various companies which build and
maintain nuclear plants can turn a profit only
because of heavy government subsidies and protec¬
tive legislation sucTi as the Price-Anderson Act,
which makes' atomic plants virtually exempt from

DIARY OF AN AFRICAN NUN (Julie DasK 1976)

6The Wilmington ten were defendants in a cele¬
brated case of official misjustice. The ten
North Carolina political activists were
charged with firebombing a grocery store dur¬
ing a time of racial tension in 1971 and con¬
victed on the basis of pressured testimony,
later recanted by some of the supposed wit¬
nesses. They were given unusual ly*harsh sen¬
tences. At the time of the film, all but the
Reverend Ben Chavis had been released. Chavis
himself is now free.

^Understanding the Hew Black Poetry (New York,
1973). By saturation, Henderson means a den¬
sity of reference and tone by which the ob¬
server can recognize the cultural Afroness of
a work, even in the absence of explicit verbal
clues. Henderson finds saturation, for in¬
stance, in Aretha Franklin's "Spirits in the
dark."

8"Film-makers Have a Great Responsibility to
Our People: An Interview with Ousmane Sem-
bene," Cineaste 6, no. 1, p. 29.

^''Interview: Warrington Hudlin," by Oliver
Franklin, program brochure for Black Films and
Film Makers, Afro-American Historical and Cul¬
tural Museum, Philadelphia, Pa.

lOSee Clyde Taylor, "Salt Peanuts: Sound and
Sense in African/American Oral/Musical Cre¬
ativity," Callaloo, June 1982. ■

czars are trying to export their plants to Third
World countries. West Germany, for example, is
supplying Brazil with many new plants despite
protests in both countries.

In the summer of 1982 worldwide attention was
given to the United Nation's Second Special Ses¬
sion on Disarmament. Called by a majority of
Third World countries, it was the catalyst to
involve Third World people around the world in
the disarmament struggle. With this, the anti¬
nuclear movement broke out of its single-issue
politics. Voices in the United States came from
solidarity movements concerned with Viequez

Since the writing of this article in the sum¬
mer of 1981 some developments have led to dif¬
ferent directions in the antinuclear struggle.
The first is that for the United States and most
of Europe the construction of power plants per
se has been effectively killed by the antinucle¬
ar movement and the incompetence of the energy
industry itself. While isolated plants are con¬
tinuing to be considered, the grand plan for
nuclear energy as a major power source is over.
Instead, within the US and Europe the nuclear

Afterword

JUMP CUT NO, 28

The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter

INVISIBLE WORKING WOMEN

—Sue Davenport

"We thought we were the 'new women.'"

"We were the interlopers--we thought we were
at the beginning of our stories, the men were at
the middle or end of theirs."

"We all loved one another."

So say the women in the 60 minute color docu¬
mentary. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ROSIE THE RIVETER,
by Connie Field. In an hour of vibrant feminist
filmmaking, five women who worked in industrial
production in World War II reflect on their war¬
time experiences, highlighting the unusual work¬
ing conditions that the high-pressured war pro¬
duction drive created for women. Three black
women and two white, these "Rosies" came from
divergent backgrounds: Illinois and Arkansas
farms, Brooklyn and Detroit. The film projects
the women being interviewed in their present
home, job, or neighborhood, some posed against
an industrial background reminiscent of their
WWII jobs in factories and shipyards.

Government, industry, and newsreel film cap¬
tured the high spirits, skilled work, and cama¬
raderie of the ZH million women who went to
work in wartime industry and the popular imagina¬
tion with the symbols of Wanda the Welder and
Rosie the Riveter. This official media treat¬
ment of the women workers privides the other
major theme of the film, as the film cuts back
and forth between the women's personal views as
expressed in typical documentary interviews and
the official ideology of the wartime period as
revealed in propaganda films. A vast gap appears
between the women's experiences and the official
version.

While the widely propagated notion that the
American woman is born to be a housewife has been
slowly undercut by the rising participation of
women in the paid workforce and changing family
patterns throughout the twentieth century, deep¬
ly held cultural values die slowly and serve to
mask and mystify people's actual experiences, and
thereby, their consciousness. Large groups of
American women--rural women, minority women, ur¬
ban white working class women--have always worked
longer and harder throughout their lives than
their middle class counterparts. The social
model of woman as housewife and mother, with
leisure for bridge games and community volunteer¬
ing, derives from aristocratic lives. It allows
middle class women and some working class women
to imitate upper class women, while masking the
fact that most women do extensive unpaid labor
in their own homes and that many women face the
"double day" of unpaid labor at home and paid
labor outside the home. Official WWII propa¬
ganda and commercial advertising ignored the in¬
visible working women of America, and focused on
the pert, cheery, white housewife, only too happy
to serve her men and her country "for the dura¬
tion." How political and economic forces per¬
petuate traditional bourgeois values through
social relationships and culture is an important
analytical goal for radical films, and ROSIE THE
RIVETER takes on this task for working women in
the WWII period.

However, ROSIE THE RIVETER does not always
adequately distinguish the differences among

women who became wartime Rosies. In my research
on women who went into defense and heavy indus¬
try during WWII, I found several different
groups entered the labor force. Some women came
from traditional AFL craft union families and
entered the industrial labor force "for the
duration," while assuming they would return to
traditional housewife status at the war's end.
These women accepted the AFL's long-held posi¬
tion that the working man should earn enough to
be able to keep his wife at home, and they saw
the war as a temporary displacement. Another
group of women came from the middle class and
tended to get into war work from a spirit of
adventure, discontent with their situation, and
desire for change.

In contrast, others were working class women
who moved into industrial jobs from years of ex¬
perience in other working class jobs such as
waitress and textile mill hand. For them higher
pay and union protections were primary motiva¬
tions. And other working class women came to
war work from different strata; they had been at
home before and were new to industrial work.

Yet others were the wives and daughters of in¬
dustrial workers with a strong sense of unionism
and roots in the communities surrounding the
plants, mills and shipyards.

For the women in ROSIE THE RIVETER, war pro¬
duction work was a move up in the labor force,
not a temporary step out of the home. They
were already responsible for a major share of
their family's income, and in defense work they
could earn more in one day than they had ever
earned in a week. Defense work was an opportun¬
ity that challenged the traditional sexual divi¬
sion of both education and labor that prepared
women for menial work. Instead, women learned
skilled mechanical and technical work, earned
high wages, enjoyed job mobility, and worked
"union." Women in basic industry were often
entering comanies with young active locals of
the new national unions of the C.I.O., created
in the militant struggles of workers in the
depths of the 1930's Depression. As these women
knew too well, women's lot in the American capi¬
talist economy was, typically, to work in low-
paying, low-skilled, dead-end, "feminized" and
ununionized jobs. For black women the situation
had been the worst, as racism combined with sex¬
ism in the hiring patterns of corporate employ¬
ers to place them in the dirtiest, meanest, and
lowest paying jobs, whether in the service sec¬
tor (servants, waitresses, laundresses) or in
factory work. War work was a challenge and an
opportunity.

Official media stressed the temporary abberra-
tion of women from the norm of the housewife,
who would be only too happy to return home to
full-time housewifery and mothering after the
war. The MARCH OF TIME heralded the "hidden
army" of housewives eager to do their patriotic
duty as "kitchen mechanics," giving up their
irons for welding torches and skirts for over¬
alls. Commercials rushed to reassure the hard¬
working women that they were still feminine
after all, especially if they used the right
soap, handcream, and perfume for their dates
after work. A popular song like "Minnie’s in
the Money" captured the women's enthusiasm for
their greater financial independence, especially
after the hard times of the Depression, as well
as their vital role as consumer in the economy.

Yet for the women in THE LIFE AND TIMES OF
ROSIE THE RIVETER— Wanita Allen, Lynn Child,
Gladys Becker, Lola Weixel, Margaret Wright—
the war work was the beginning of their stories,
and the mass demobilization of women out of
basic and defense industry as the war was near¬
ing an end came as a rude shock. Nationally,
the women had done their jobs well by all ac¬
counts, whether by company, government, or
union measurement and reports, and nearly three-
quarters of all women interviewed, in government,
union and public interest surveys, wanted to re¬
tain their wartime jobs.^ The women in the film
still had major responsibility for providing for
family income, and they needed to work. "There
was a lot of money around, but it wasn't in our
pockets," said one woman. They knew that govern¬
ment wage-and-price controls had kept wages a
lot further down than prices. While some women
were kept on in their wartime jobs and others
fought and won their right to stay, most were
ci moted into the feminized sectors of the econ¬
omy, back to "women's work." After four years
of welding and steady attendance at after-work
classes, Gladys could, find no company willing to
hire her as a welder. She became a cook in a
school cafeteria for the rest of her working
life. No factory in Brooklyn would hire Lola to
do her welding that had helped win the war. Her
dream was "to make a beautiful ornamental gate.
Was that so much to want?"

Another important contribution to our under¬
standing of the actual lives of women that ROSIE
THE RIVETER makes is to show how the war work
politicized women, making them more conscious
about the dynamics of power in America, be it
between the sexes, the races, or social classes.
Crossing the traditional sex barrier in the work¬
force sharpened women's understanding of how the
sexual division of labor pitted men against women
and created hardship and false ideas in people's
lives. As Lola comments, "Men had been sold a
bill of goods--that the skills were so hard to
learn, that, in fact, could be quickly learned."
Yet, in the home traditions persisted with less
interruption. As Lola herself says, "I'd go
home and cook and clean and do the laundry while
my brother lay on the couch. We didn't question
it so much then. But I was angry about it for
years ."

In what is for many viewers the dramatic peak
of the film, Lynn Child recalled an instance of
racial discrimination. Working as the only
women and the only black on a welding crew in a
ship's hold, she witnessed a 19-year-old white
officer attack a Filipino worker, kicking him
repeatedly and shouting racist insults. She
swung around threatening the officer with the
full flame of her blowtorch if he did not stop
his attack. He stopped. Lynn was summoned to
the main office. Braced for censure, she was
surprised to see her entire crew behind her, to
hear the commanding officer fumble with questions
probing the incident, and to see the young offi¬
cer cry. When the supervisor accused her of
being a communist, she said that if that's what
communists stood for, "Then I'm the biggest com¬
munist in the whole world." The story is drama¬
tic, but it also begs the question of the actual
leftist political affiliations and sympathies of
the Rosies.

Not all unions treated the women workers
alike, and in some, like the United Auto Work¬
ers, United Electrical Workers and the United
Steel Workers of America, women were more active
both as union stewards and officers and as rank-
and-filers pressing sex and race discrimination
grievances. Lola explains, "We started a union
at the shop, and we .started to wear union but¬
tons. Mr. Kofsky didn't like us anymore. We
were no longer his girls. One day we came to
work and were locked out.... Black women were
paid 5^ less per hour. Our union filed a com¬
plaint at the National Labor Relations Board.

When we got into the United Electrical Workers
Union, we got an 80% raise."

The film suggests that in the manipulation of
public images of wartime women, the government,
employers and media were pushing hard the tra¬
ditional view of Woman as Housewife to suppress
the runaway implications of women doing men's
work so successfully, with the pride and cama¬
raderie that wartime working conditions engen¬
dered. If women could master mechanics, blow¬
torches, and blueprints, what couldn't they
master? If women were doing so well with 12
million men away, would they be willing to
accept so readily their traditional inferior
places— at home, at work, in society?

It is at this point that the film leaves the
audience hungry for more. We meet the five
women, they are magnificent, and we warm to
them, care about them, are proud of them, and
we sympathize with them. But neither we nor
they are allowed to be angry at the forces re¬
sponsible for their situation, or encouraged to
take steps together to deal with the conflicts.

We are isolated as viewers from them as subjects,
as they are from each other, because the film
portrays them as five individual women, unre¬
lated in conscious and collective ways to other
workers.

The visuals of the interviews tend to freeze

JUMP CUT NO. 28

the women in single images--Lo1a against old
brick factories in New York, Lynn in a shipyard,
Margaret out her kitchen window looking onto a
massive Detroit plant, Gladys deep in an arm¬
chair in her house, and Wanita at her desk in
the community social service agency where she
now works. Visually the women are pinned, alone
and in a static situation. They are abstracted
from the dynamics of their present lives, as the
film creates few bridges from their wartime ex¬
perience to the present. We see that Gladys
Becker worked in a cafeteria for the rest of her
working life, and sense the disappointments and
inadequacies of that situation, but how did she
deal with it? Did these women ever join unions
again? How did they relate to the civil rights
and black liberation movements? How did they
view the women's movement?

In this way, ROSIE THE RIVETER is not really
about the dynamics of history. The film is
polite, and avoids the nitty gritty of the con¬
tradictions of capitalism and patriotism, the
basic forces which have steadily persisted and
shaped American politics throughout the Cold
War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and, now,
as reactionary militarism builds a death machine
with people's lives. The film does not name the
reasons for the women's unusual opportunity —

WWII as the massive boon to American capitalism,
the drive for war profits, the alliance of cor¬
porate power and the state, F.D.R.'s switch from
Dr. Dew Deal to Dr. Win the War. The film does not
probe the contradictions of wartime work for the
unions and the workers— the no-strike agreement
in return for the maintenance-of-membership con¬
tract clause; the loss of overtime pay; the Com¬
munist Party's uncritical position toward cor¬
porate profits and state policies; the strong
wildcat strike movement. ROSIE THE RIVETER does
not explore the effects of the women's wartime
work experience, which persisted in spite of the
retraction of opportunity--women's relations
with men in the postwar readjustment; changing
family life; involvement in community organiza¬
tions, unions, or the civil rights movement.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ROSIE THE RIVETER uses
the style of several other feminist films of the
1970's, interviews with individuals intercut
with archival footage over contemporary music
and voice, as in UNION MAIDS by Julia Reichert,

Jim Klein, and Miles Mogelescu, and BABIES AND
BANNERS by Lynn Goldfarb, Lorraine Gray, and
Aline Golden. Both of those films make a strong¬
er case for the collective actions of women,
grounding the individuals firmly in a union con¬
text. Connie Field emphasized, instead, five
individual women, balanced well for racial dif¬
ferences and backgrounds (although the presence
of a Latina woman would have broadened the im¬
pact of the film), and relies on their strength
of character, insight, and story-telling ability,
in counterpoint to the official "stories," to
involve us in the central argument about the
unjust manipulation of women.

It is always a danger for feminist art or

w f

' A

It ^

politics to focus exclusively on women's issues
and not to "greet the world," as it is a danger
to personalize history solely in individual
lives. Unless women are shown as participants
in the social and political struggles in the
community, workplace, or home, then, by impli¬
cation, they are powerless to affect their lives.
Within Field's chosen structure of the interview
versus propaganda counterpoint, the film could
have probed further the social context of women's
lives. The film could have lessened their isola¬
tion by probing more into the women's shop
floor cooperation at work, union activity, and
their political thinking. More period footage
of unions could have supplemented the interviews.
Otherwise, women appear as the victims of his¬
tory, manipulated by official propaganda, left
with nostalgia for golden moments in the past,
but unable to take common action to shape their
lives.

In fact, research will probably show that WWII
production work had an important role in changing
many women's perceptions of themselves, their
wishes and dreams, their aspirations for them¬
selves and their families, their acceptance of

"tradition" and a greater willingness to speak
out, joining social organizations and political
movements. 2 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ROSIE THE
RIVETER is a dynamic and informative film about
the real lives of working women in America and
points us in a direction for making more films
that strip away the veils of tradition and
authority to show the social processes at work
in people's lives by which we can and do reshape
society.

1. Sheila Tobias and Lisa Anderson, "What
Really Happened to Rosie the Riveter?", 1,
no 12 (June 1973) 92-97.

2. For indications of this see Gerda Lerner,

Black Women in White America: A Documentary His¬
tory (New York: Vintage Books, 1973). My own
findings along this line appear in Sue Davenport,
"A Job in the Mills: Women Workers in Steel
Production in the Chicago Area During World War
II," unpublished M.A. thesis. University of
Illinois at Chicago, 1981. ■

SUSANA

PHOTOGRAPHER’S
SELF- PORTRAIT

--Claudia Gorbman

SUSANA is a cinematic self-portrait, from
which one can glean the following information.
Susana Blaustein comes from Mendosa, Argentina,
where her father is a pediatrician and her moth¬
er a dentist. Her married sister lives in Swe¬
den; her younger brother and sister Graciela in
Mendosa. She left home, lived in Jerusalem for
awhile, and now in her twenties, she lives in
San Francisco. Graciela has visited her and
tried to change Susana, whose lesbianism has
been the focus of pain and frustration in rela¬
tions with her family. Susana takes pictures
and has made this film. The "story" is told
through voice-over narration, family photos, a
variety of old film footage, the director/sub¬
ject's own photographic work, and filmed inter¬
views of her sister, two former lovers, and her¬
self.

The film begins with a brief series of photo¬
graphic self-portraits. The first face smiles
attractively; the second looks less assertive.

In the third, an as-if-candid grimace appears,
and the fourth makes Susana 's face downright
grotesque. This series of photographic por¬
traits provides the kickoff for the cinematic
one. Each successive interview will be framed
and posed like a separate photo; but also like
photos, their juxtaposition causes us to make
connections beyond their borders. The photos
also prepare a nice structural resonance at the
end, where we see another set of photos of Susa¬
na— this time posed with another woman in each.

Virtually everyone interviewed talks about Su¬
sana in terms of images, or photography in par¬

ticular. Her father relates her childhood in¬
terest in painting. One ex-lover recounts how
Susana defined stages of their relationship by
creating or destroying photographic images of
her. Another lover describes Susana as not ac¬
cepting herself but rather having "to be a pic¬
ture of someone." Graciela holds up to the cam¬
era one of her sister's more compelling photo¬
graphs; it shows Susana sitting at one end of a
table set for two, underneath which we see (in a
superimposition) the rest of her family. "Whom
is she waiting for?" asks Graciela, and we along
with her, as though understanding the photograph
will yield the key to the whole Susana mystery.

SUSANA' s fetishization of photographic/cinemat¬
ographic representation makes for an interesting
thematic cement to bond its diverse voices and
images. One also senses here a Godardian hones¬
ty-through reflexivity: we can approach under¬
standing through h series of representations,
but "the truth" will always elude us because of
the selective and distortive nature of represen¬
tation itself; better, then, to acknowledge con¬
sciously the "lie" of the medium.

That inaugural progression from sweet to dour
in the opening photos, though, remains to be ex¬
plained. It leads us to suppose that in her un¬
compromising search for honesty about herself,
the filmmaker saw behind a smiling appearance a
glum, humorless essence. It's frankly not a
pleasant picture to watch. Perhaps its tone
arises from an effort to offer a counterpoint to
the heroic genre of films about lesbianism. And
although it is indeed naive to argue the neces¬
sity of "positive images" in every lesbian film,
SUSANA causes us to question the political value.

at least, of a film showing a lesbian who seems
resolutely depressed and which does not provide
further insight to make this a situation worth
looking at. (We learn nothing, for example, of
the cultural specificity of being a lesbian and
a Latina. Perhaps her middle-class background
hinders her from seeing herself as Latina, which
in this country is so often a question of class
as well as one of race or ethnicity.) Thus we're
led to ask what inspired this film and for what
audience it is conceived. The viewer might find
SUSANA valid as a personal diary, a sketch of a
life at a particular stage, documenting the dif¬
ficulties and sadness raised within her family
over her sexuality and her move away from home.
Since she dedicates the film to Graciela, it can
be seen as a present given to her sister so that
the latter will accept the person behind it too.
But its personal, political, and aesthetic dimen¬
sions seem at odds. Shown to the public, it runs
the danger of being taken as an extended pout,
unenlightening for anyone not directly involved.

It seems appropriate to conment on the film¬
maker/protagonist as romantic hero. She is the
doomed/damned artist, pursuing a quest (for
what? stability? peace? identity?). The charac¬
teristics of literary romanticism are all there:
the quest; "sincerity"; the lone individual at
odds with roots, society, and family; the highly
personal, confessional, self-indulgent tone and
structure; even elements of (geographical) exot¬
icism. We might even suggest that her photo¬
graphic self-portraits serve as doppelgangers.

The doubling theme is further compounded in the
final series of photos of Susana paired with
various lovers. The final shot, of course,
shows a live-action Susana posing with a photo-

graph of herself, implying that she and her
double- image will continue to engage in mutual
pursuit. Susana has chosen the role of romantic
hero, then--but how ill-fitting this role seems
for a woman.

Susana does smile. One smile appears in the
very first still photograph--a smile that within
two shots becomes a grimace and which will not
be recuperated. One exception: later we see
home movies of Susana with a Russian boyfriend
with whom she once kept company in a vain effort
to disprove her homosexuality to herself. The
two of them are seen crossing a sunny street.
Blaustein has slowed down the footage and re¬
versed the motion, presumably as the filmmaker's
symbolic annihilation/reversal of her heterosex¬
ual "regression." What remains in my memory,
however, is the healthy smile on Susana 's face
as the reverse motion paradoxically makes the
couple look as if they're dancing. It's ironic
that in an effort to have us accept Susana as
she is, SUSANA offers us no joy in the present

and works to evoke nostalgic pleasure in connec¬
tion with a heterosexual past.

Ultimately SUSANA is a taking of control.
Blaustein, arranger and manipulator of images,
makes a film to explain her present world. As
arranger, of course, she has the last word, and
she exercises this prerogative throughout. Em¬
blematic of this tendency is the final scene in
which Susana and Graciela converse and come to
an understanding about their differences. Grac¬
iela, on the left, faces the camera; we may cavil
at what she says (she still feels Susana has to
"change" K but visually speaking she is defense¬
less, and we actually tend to root for her as
the underdog. Susana, on the other hand, walks
into the frame at right and sits in profile.
During the dialogue she lights up a cigarette
with ceremony and aplomb. She's busy with the
microphone and the cigarette. She gets further
advantage from her attire, using the popular
lesbian iconography of a dyke-vogue sportcap.
Finally she exercises power here as a filmmaker:

JUMP CUT NO. 28

she ends the interview by walking out of the
shot, leaving the camera running on her sister,
who remains seated, vulnerable in her inactivity
and exposure.

Is this fair? Does Blaustein know how much of
herself she reveals in creating this discrepancy
between the film's manifest and latent messages
and values? How much does our perception of
this film— any film— depend on our perception of
its intent, its maker's ethos, its social pur¬
pose, its cultural -historical context? Such
framing questions make SUSANA an intriguing film
(with qualifications) with regard to the problem¬
atics of feminist criticism.

This review came out of a discussion with K.
Boyle, P. Rand, E. Harris, K. Bosley, and T.
Haasl. SUSANA is distributed by Women Make Mov¬
ies, 257 W. 19th St., New York, NY 10011. h

The films of Sharon Couzin

Romanticism reconsidered

—Gina Marchetti and Carol Slingo

Sharon Couzin is a Chicago-based experimental
filmmaker whose output since 1970 has been fluid
and strong: eleven films completed and one in
progress. However, she has yet to gain national
recognition from those critics and supporters
who deal with the subject of experimental film-
making. Unfortunately, Couzin's predicament is
not unique. Women in all modes of film produc¬
tion have consistently been ignored, undervalued,
and misunderstood by film scholars. Her problem
is compounded because she lives away from the
museum center of the country. New York, and is
dedicated to the least "commercial" of all film
genres, experimental film.

Since the early days of film history, women
have been attracted to the aesthetic potenti¬
alities of the medium. But, unable to achieve
or reach positions of control and authority
within the industry, many have kept a kind of
amateur standing, tucked into the category
(catch-all) of "experimental." Although still
partially segregated by the film culture estab¬
lishment, this personal, adventurous type of
filmmaking has been brought into the "Academy"
by the journal Film Culture, the Anthology Film
Archive, and of course by its most vocal spokes¬
man, P. Adams Sitney. Unfortunately, with a
very few exceptions, this has been an associa¬
tion of men, focusing on each others' interests.
It has also been a closed group regional ly--con-
centrating on New York work. Although film¬
makers working in the Midwest, West and South
have established their own festivals and devel¬
oped regional audiences, the women in this group
remain somewhat apart from other women film¬
makers. But this situation will probably change.

For the most part, Sharon Couzin works within
a tradition of autobiography, personal vision,
and imaginative art. Her vision of these things
reflects a personal view of this common ground
of daily life. As such, Couzin's films can be
placed within the tradition of romantic aes¬
thetics, which still outlines the parameters
of much contemporary art.

Romanticism as an aesthetic movement developed
at the end of the 18th Century, reflecting a
shift in Western civilization away from the
feudal and into the modern bourgeois era, with
its emphasis on individual achievement and
acquisition opposed to rank and aristocratic
privilege. Outside of questions of blood,
lineage and property, the individual began to
be considered unique, prized for her/his indi¬
viduality, originality and singular vision. The
personal realm of the home and family and the
life of the "ordinary" person began to be con¬
sidered apt subjects for art. The artist
shifted from being a recipient of official
favor to embodying "genius," acting as a mis¬
understood and underappreciated romantic hero,
and expressing distinctive feelings and a sub¬
jective vision. The artist was allowed to
stand apart from society and to criticize it,
to examine it in relation to the subjective
realm of dream, thought and fantasy. The
interior world of the mind became the roman¬
tic artist's domain. As Hugh Honour points
out in his book Romanticism, this sensibility
still forms the basis of what we generally
regard to be the avant-garde of our art:

Romantic ideas about artistic creativity,
originality, individuality, authenticity and
integrity, the Romantic conception of the
meaning and purpose of works of art and the
role of the artist continue to dominate aes¬
thetic thought. So deeply are they embedded
in our attitudes and ways of thinking that
we are rarely aware of them. They emerge
where least expected. Even the notion of an
avant-garde marching ahead of popular taste
is Romantic in origin. ^

Freed from the need for aristocratic patron¬
age and, at least for those women of the priv-

ROSEBLOOD Photo A

ileged class, freed from the worst of domestic
and farm labor, women became artists. The 19th
Century produced writers such as the Bronte
sisters, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Emily
Dickinson. Within the writer's private world,
women were allowed to express themselves ac¬
cording to Romanticism's aesthetic guidelines:
to express their private lives, thoughts, and
experiences.

Romanticism actually prizes that position in
which most women of our culture find themselves:
outside the domain of power, shut into a highly
individual world of dreams and fantasies that
have not been generally recognized because they
remain outside the public, meaning male, domain.
This legacy's negative aspect means the indi¬
vidual's exploring her/his interior world may
substitute for lack of status and power in the
public realm. In addition. Romanticism general¬
ly places the individual's problems over social
and political concerns. Broader issues are ex¬
pressed in terms of individual cases; the larger
context must be inferred, e.g., as* in Harriet
Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.^

The contemporary woman who chooses to work
within the romantic tradition faces advantages
and disadvantages. On one hand, the tradition
stresses the artist's role as individual critic
of the world, with privilege given to personal
interpretation, sharing of the psyche, and auto¬
biographical liberty. Some artists carry this
freedom to the point at which self-criticism dis¬
appears, seeing themselves as transcendent
heroes or wallowing in private neuroses. The
tradition's strengths and weaknesses have an
impact on romantically-oriented women artists'
work.

In Visionary Cinema,'^ Sitney argues that an

aesthetic position can be traced from 19th Cen¬
tury Romantic poetry through the work of Ameri¬
can independent filmmakers such as Maya Deren
and Stan Brakhage. In an earlier generation,
Deren used her camera as a privileged eye on the
mundane world, giving everyday objects a sym¬
bolic, dreamlike significance. Likewise she
used her body as the focal point of disturbing
fantasies (AT LAND, MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON).
However, when Sitney writes about Deren 's work,
he overlooks how she observed women's relation¬
ship to dream, fantasy, and these everyday,
sexually-determined conditions of life.

Using her own psyche and dance-trained body
as tools of expression, Deren makes visual those
concerns that are not merely "romantically" in¬
dividualistic but belong to the fantasies, night¬
mares and frustrations of many women. Deren
explores and justifies both the position of the
female artist and the experience of the woman
viewer. Perhaps this is the importance of
romantic aesthetics to feminism and to women as
artists and as audience.

There is only one principal woman "visionary"
in Sitney's history. As other male historians
have done, he describes American independent
filmmakers as principally male. A second his¬
tory demands to be written, that of all the
women working in the autobiographical genre:

Marie Menken, Carol ee Schneeman, Barbara Hammer,
and many others. Here Sharon Couzin's work is
important for any discussion of women artists
aesthetics which grows out of women's lived
experiences in our culture.

In dealing with Couzin's work, we have chosen
four films, three which were completed within
the last year and an earlier one which has re¬
ceived national and international film festival
recognition, ROSEBLOOD (1975). These films ,
display Couzin's considerable technical skill
and concentration on detail. She creates with
intricately layered images. At a fli'st screen¬
ing, the viewer may find it impossible to piece
together on any but a subliminal level all the
subtleties and cross-references. However, un¬
like the new structural filmmakers who develop
complexity for the sake of formal exploration
(an interest mainly shared by audiences of
other filimakers) , Couzin uses this technique
in order to explore the personal and the pri¬
vate.

Probably more than any other Couzin film,
ROSEBLOOD is influenced by that tradition in
which Maya Deren worked. Couzin makes concrete
the fleeting images of subjective experience.

Like Deren, she uses a dancer's body to create
dream-like impressions, explore a woman's move¬
ments in space, and make physical an ethereal
world. Also like Deren, Couzin explores dream
states, studies the stylized movements of rit¬
ual, and symbolically evokes myth. ROSEBLOOD
focuses on the sensuality of the female body
and on the artist's vision of the relationship
between women and nature. Conscioisness of the
external world of nature leads to a quest for
self-awareness. Exploring nature becomes a
metaphor for exploring the self and the uncon¬
scious. As in a dream, links are formed through
the juxtaposition of the body with the imagery
of our cultural mythology about female sexuality,
forming the basis of ROSEBLOOD 's meditation on
women* nature, physical movemeet-and dream.

ROSEBLOOD's rhythm is musical and cyclical.

Calm follows climax; lyrical moments follow
dramatic ones. The neutral sepia tone of much
of the footage is periodically disrupted by
color. Key gestures— the turning of a head,
the lifting of a arm— are repeated, following
•this rhythm as if choreographed.

The dancer's body is photographed against,
or covered by, flowers, blood, seashells, water,
branches. The body merges with its surroundings
(see Photo A); circular shapes and motions meta¬
phorically evoke the cycles of women's lives

JUMP CUT NO. 28

and the seasons of nature. ROSEBLOOD is in an
indirect and nontraditional way a dance, but
the movements of this dance are framed and con¬
structed not by the dancer but by the filmmaker,
who pieces together gestures of arms and legs
to create new forms. At one point Couzin ani¬
mates torn bits of a photograph of the woman's
face, and the photograph reconstitutes itself.

The -camera moves in relation to the dancer, in
and around its subject, frequently distorted
by optical effects, the fish-eye lens, kaleido¬
scopic mattes, and reprinted footage. The
dancer's body is captured imitating the trees
behind her. Her photograph floats on the sur¬
face of water, rephotographed. The filmmaker
manipulates the dancer's movements to reflect
and interact with both the natural world and
cinematic artifice.

ROSEBLOOD as a relatively early work is very
much an outgrowth of Couzin 's painterly inter¬
ests. Couzin was originally drawn to films as
a way to explore ideas of photographic abstrac¬
tion, composition, color, light and line and to
go beyond painterly considerations into the
realm of temporal and spatial manipulation. To
this end Couzin uses considerable technical
skill.

As a means toward gaining total artistic
control, Couzin has mastered the optical printer,
which allows her to use double exposure to spa¬
tially change images and alter time. The printer
allows her to bypass the film-processing labora¬
tory; with this freedom, she can do almost every¬
thing in her own home except the final transfers
of sound on to image. She can construct within
the frame, isolating those elements that inter¬
est her. By using step printing, she can re¬
late images to each other through montage.

A TROJAN HOUSE (1977-1981) in its finished
form uses some of the formal techniques of ROSE¬
BLOOD to make a concrete, critical statement
about the place of the woman artist within the
male-controlled art world. Couzin's hand-held
camera, disturbing juxtaposition of seemingly
unrelated objects, fish-ey» lens perceptions,
and complex, unsettling sound track maintain a
balance between what is humdrum reality (the
house) and what is threatening nightmare. A
TROJAN HOUSE experiments with narrative form in
the same way that the contemporary novel has
come to be an experiment with words. The sound
track carries an intricate mixture of precise
description, fragmentary dialogue by unidenti¬
fied speakers, self-analytical commentary,
quotation, poetry, music (principally by
Karlheinz Stockhausen), and disjointed image-
sound patterns.

The artist-protagonist's relationship to
the art world is explored through three prin¬
cipal sets of references. The first refers
to the anonymous sculptor of California's
Watts Towers (in actuality, Simon Rodia).

These towers were made from discards, found
objects, and junk— much of it domestic in
nature. The second reference is to Max Ernst
and Rene Magritte, painters, and the blues
singer John Lee Hooker (male artists). The
third is to potential threats, even violence,
and to an obscure California murder story,
cast within an unfinished, undefined series
of descriptive passages on both sound and image
track leading to alternative possibilities. Al¬
though Couzin does not reveal the murder victim's
identity, the various women shown in the film
are put into positions where they might be vul¬
nerable to attack. They must combine the domes¬
tic and artistic aspects of their lives. Such
a task's difficulties are shown, for instance,
in shots of a woman engaging in the particularly
rigorous medium of hardwood sculpture. A se¬
quence demonstrating the dangers depicts a rock
singer performing with her band while hands hold
and display an array of drugs. Anxiety and ap¬
prehension are indicated by the camera's for¬
ward motion shot through a fish-eye lens and
the visual eeriness surrounding familiar objects
removed from familiar places.

In contrast, the artist's world within the
home/HOUSE is traditionally secure and her role
within the family warm and nurturing. Here
there is more hope for connections between her
traditional domestic-creative role and her
artist role "outside." A bond of solidarity is
shown between mother and daughter as the adult

A TROJAN HOUSE Photo B

DEUTSCHLAND SPIEGEL Photo C

passes fragments of her (women's) lives to her
child: scissors, hammer, photographs, and puz¬
zle-tools of creation in both areas. These
become the visual representations of the female
bond. In the animated sequence shown, Couzin
makes the stuff of the domestic sphere become
the material for creative impulse. Using the
rotoscope technique, she transforms a chair in¬
to a line drawing of itself, into a living ani¬
mated house (see photo B).

Couzin sees woman's creativity in a tradition¬
ally masculine sphere, however, subject to limi¬
tations not yet mastered: as, for example, in
A TROJAN HOUSE'S references to interrupted or
abnormal relationships between artists and their
own mothers. Magritte's mother committed sui¬
cide; Ernst described himself as hatched from an
egg; the narrator's mother is said to be "lost.".
Men are seen as rejecting creativity. As
mothers and as artists, women implicitly chal¬
lenge men's traditionally exclusive right to
be creative in the public world. This is some¬
thing they have yet to overcome as women over¬
come the denial of power in the public sphere.

A TROJAN HOUSE provides an elaborate archi¬
tectural metaphor. It opens with images of
fences, arches, doorways, gates and the elabo¬
rate colonnades of the Watts Towers with their
shiny incrustations. In all senses A TROJAN
HOUSE is about structure and building: how lives
are ordered, how men and women build forms for
themselves to contain and protect them, but also
to limit and confine them, to live in and hide.
This film maintains this idea by the intertitles
which punctuate it: STRUCTURE/PLACING THE WIN¬
DOWS AND DOORS/STICKS AND STONES/A FORMAL FACADE/
THE HOUSE ALIVE/ PASSAGE/ SYMMETRY RETOUCHED/EN¬
TOMBED. Couzin elaborates upon architectural
forms, such as doorways, arches, windows--all
these indicating relationships between interi¬
or and exterior space. She moves her hand-held
camera up to, around, and through spaces, open¬
ing them and linking the literal forms and
structures to the relationship between interior
life and the outer world. The important posi¬
tion of the camera as an eye opening out--either
offering a full screen view or limited by the
fish-eye lens— creates a link between inner and
outer life. When the image is rounded and con¬
densed, the space created gives the subjective
impression of being seen through the surface
contours of an eye.

A TROJAN HOUSE is a self-reflexive work. Not
only does it present a generalized portrait of
the woman artist, but it specifically deals with
Sharon Couzin and her position as filmmaker.
Couzin's voice is on the soundtrack. She films
herself, demonstrating the camera within a mir¬
ror-like doorway. She punctuates the film with
shots of herself splicing pieces together to
create a self-portrait with the fragments of her
life. She paints her face white, reveals her
image in still photographs, and like the white
plaster bust of an ancient Greek woman seen
lying beneath the Towers, becomes part of the
narrative and visual structure of A TROJAN
HOUSE.

Despite these strong images of an artist
creating her art, i.e., creating this film, the
ambiguity and apprehension remain. The man, the
murderer, puts pieces of her life into his sculp¬
ture. Toward the end of the film the narrator
intones, "He, the sculptor, attempts to arrange
these [domestic objects] in a logical way... At
some point he is apprehended, or..." This line
is repeated with different potential endings.

We see concrete images of a man on the run and
the violence that threatens the woman's life/
work. But she must deal with violence within

and without if she is to succeed in the outside
world, even if that means the man will try to
enter her house, exploit her, and put her life
into his own art.

But if the fictional Sharon Couzin yields some
of her cups and souvenirs, it is the real Couzin
who completes the film. Women participate in
the arts today as never before,^ and this film
represents them. In one sense the creative act
depicted in the film is extraordinary, like a
bright red apple attached to a barren tree, or
the birth of a child--one act which cannot be
usurped. On the other hand, it is as simple and
everyday asachild's spherical puzzle or a chair
that dissolves into line drawing, or cut-out ad¬
vertisements, which are another way to order dom¬
estic life. The title A TROJAN HOUSE may, in
fact, imply that the house and domestic life can
be used as a weapon to enter and conquer a cre¬
ative domain previously ruled by men.

DEUTSCHLAND SPIEGEL (GERMANY MIRRORED, 1979-80),
even more than A TROJAN HOUSE is influenced by
the New Novel. It has a convoluted, Borges-like
structure and a female narrator whose tale of an
unspecified horror is told in numerous versions,
varying in non-specific degrees. Her story con¬
cerns a child, a father, and family life threat¬
ened by vague militarism and scientific experi¬
ments upon people (see Photo C). The visuals, on
the other hand, provide concrete references: to
war, concentration camps, the Berlin wall, work,
consumer products, technology, and fences. Again,
this film has a cyclical rhythm. It repeats and
expands upon or changes its visual imagery as the
narrator repeats her story. Couzin creates a
sinister, absurd world with rare human contacts.
She intercuts her own footage with found material
dating from the early sixties. In these, West-
German-newsreel-type sequences, she contrasts
an East German display of military hardware with
a race run by formally-dressed waiters carrying
trays full of drinks, creating an abrasive jux¬
taposition. She counters the building of the
Berlin Wall with shots of workmen laying quite
ordinary bricks. A boy, possibly the child
talked about in the narrative, appears in color,
jumping rope: he's in training to be a boxer, a
soldier, a human guinea pig, perhaps a victim.

Some of the footage is over twenty years old,
suggesting the archaic quality of memory. The
color scenes, in contrast, suggest a "normal"
present in which the narrator continues to
function.

DEUTSCHLAND SPIEGEL is fiction, less clearly
autobiographical than the other films but equal¬
ly concerned that the role and work of the film¬
maker be identified ("But behind the projector..
.."). The story may happen in Germany or any¬
where, but the threat and unease pertain to our
time and lives. The circular movements rein¬
force the theme of indoctrination; as movements
become machine like, human forms become exten¬
sions of the factory. We see trays of dolls,
toy cars as if on an assembly line, the boy per¬
forming repetitious activity for scientists.

Sports references (fox hunt, waiters' tourna¬
ment, boxing training) add an absurd dimension
depicting human activity as a senseless mani¬
pulation of the body, and these references by"
images showing the pointless building of a
stage set in the middle of the street.

Couzin's collage technique resembles Bruce
Conner's in its distortion of found footage,
turning ordinary events in ridiculous or sinis¬
ter directions. The sense of dream hovers; the
audience's perspective at any given time may be
fragmented, as when the visuals and their conno¬
tations are re-interpreted by a narrator's des-

SALVE Photo D

criptions of them. We experience a disjuncture
between the Images shown and the images described,
a discomforting lack of consistency. As in the
New Novel, the veracity of the tale told and the
relationship of the tale to the teller become
questioned. Each variation of word and image
alters our perspective on the whole, until the
viewer begins to question the tale, the concept
of memory, the act of storytelling, and her/h s
perception of events.

Furthermore, the repeated images refer to each
other: automobile graveyards to lines of minia¬
ture cars: lines of toy cars to lines of manu¬
factured dolls: lines of dolls to people endless¬
ly waiting. Concentration camp overtones are
reinforced by images of enclosure: fences, tar¬
paulins, narrow alleys, barbed wire, bricked-up
windows. Over images of claustrophobia and mani¬
pulation, the narrator speaks of her childhood;
her early expectations were different from those
of her brother as they learned adult gender roles
and became indoctrinated by things as simple as
toys and as complex as mass murder.

After the highly charged and implicity horrify¬
ing material of DEUTSCHLAND SPIEGEL, Couzin's
films SALVE (1981) returns to a romantic, con¬
templative mode similar to that of ROSEBLOOD.

SALVE is an unsentimental meditation upon human
mortality, the measurement of time, the passing
of generations, and--Couzin's constant theme—
the reduction of girls' expectations as they
grow up, and womens' as they grow older (see

Photo D). SALVE focuses on the initiation of one
girl into the language, but not the mysteries, of
partriarchal measurement— from the calculation of
pi to the passage of lives into death. The child
wanders through a cemetary,, Chicago's Graceland,
where Chicago's important and wealthy men are
buried along with their mothers and wives. In
one brief sequence, Couzin moves her camera past
the elaborate monuments commemorating owners and
managers to the anonymous markers commemorating
ordinary women. The cemetery's well-kept elegance
reveals scciety's attitudes toward death and men's
dying vs. women's passing. While the girl walks
between the green and gray rows of gravestones,
carelessly running her fingers over the Gothic
letters or playing games with rocks, her voice
on the sound track tells us, "Pythagoras was a
mathematician. . .my father is a mathematician..,"
and that voice-off reads complex texts about
mathematical theory and practicei— going back to
the Greeks who thought that even numbers were
female, odd ones male. All the while numbers
themselves are spoken, repeated, written down—
seemingly part of a mystery that the girl is not
privy to. Her own epitaph— like that of the
women in the graveyard— may indeed be no more
than "Mother" or "Wife."

Once again Couzin emphasized a certain perspec¬
tive on her subject by her personal i zed use of the
fish-eye lens and her close-up, dense, tactile
exploration of objects: grave, stones, stairways,
mausoleums, and windows. She contrasts , the
transience of childhood with images of human as¬
piration toward the eternal and immobile, which
graves and buildings represent. She maintains a
melancholy tone 4n SALVE by evocatively using
classical music, rain imagery, and muted colors;
she expresses traditional romantic notions of
grief and loss to further emphasize the waste and
lost potential in girl child's life.

Couzin's perspective is here at the far end of
the romantic spectrum, which has as its opposite
the late 19th Century patriarchal and acquisitive
attitudes toward life and death which the builders
of Graceland Cemetary sought to ennoble. In SALVE,
DEUTSCHLAND SPIEGEL, A TROJAN HOUSE Couzin depicts
such traditions as detrimental and destructive to
women's creativity. Continuing in this vein,

Couzin is now finishing WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS,
a film about the way women see themselves as
opposed to the way society as a whole and men
see them.

As Couzin is quick to point out, an audience for
the kind of films she makes must be nurtured along
and cultivated. Unfortunately, outside New York
City, few communities provide this kind of com¬
mitment to non-traditional filmmaking. Museums
neglect local people, particularly local inde¬
pendent filmmakers, preferring to address the
known tastes of a traditionally-minded patronage.

JUMP CUT NO. 28

Financial support is even harder to come by.

Not only does Couzin teach in order to support
herself and her family, but she also takes on
occasional additional non-film work to finance
special projects or new equipment. Despite this
financial burden, however, she has by these means
avoided any absolute ties to an educational insti
tution for equipment or to a government grant for
day-to-day living expenses. The gains, she's
achieved however, do not outweigh her losses.
Problems of financing and finding time to exe¬
cute a project are legion, for any woman working
in the experimental mode. Couzin, for example,
has a full-time appointment at the School of the
Art Institute of Chicago. She admits that al¬
though teaching has its rewards, it is still an
emotionally draining and time-consuming enter¬
prise which takes energy away from her own work.

Despite the potential drawbacks mentioned above
working with traditional romantic conventions of¬
fers distinct advantages, particularly for the
woman filmmakers hoping to strike a responsive
chord in other women. If they were raised in
the romantic aesthetic, on Jane Eyve, Wuthering
Heights and the poetry of Dickinson, an~audience
of women not necessarily familiar with avant-
garde filmmaking or interested in the technical
gymnastics of the experimental mode will quite
easily understand and appreciate a filmmaker's
work which describes their lives in a recogniz¬
able, but fresh and challenging way. 5 It is im¬
portant that Sharon Couzin speaks to the often
obscured, neglected or unexpressed viewpoint of
the socially alienated woman viewers, who may be
an avant-garde audience in the making.

1. Hugh Honour, Romantioism (New York:

Harper and Row, 1979), p. 210.

2. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Unale Tom's Cabin
(New York: Harper & Row, 1979) p. 319.

3. P. Adams Sitney, visionary Cinema (New
York: Oxford University ^ess, 1976).

4. See Thomas B. Hess and Elizabeth C. Bader,
eds.. Art and Sexual Politics (New York: Mac
Millan Publishing Co., Inc., 1973); and Lucy L.
Lippard, From the Center (New York: E.P. Dutton,
1976).

5. A discussion of the pros and cons of
romantic aesthetics in feminist filmmaking has
been raised in terms of the films of Barbara
Hammer. See "Counter-Currencies of a Lesbian
Iconography" by Jacquelyn Zita and "Lesbian
Cinema and Romantic Love" by Andrea Weiss in
JUMP CUTy 24/25 (March 1981).

New U.S. black cinema

--Clyde Taylor

The best approach to black cinema as art is to
see it in intimate relation to the full range of
Afro-American art expression. The urgent need
at this point is to recognize that black cinema
has arrived to take its natural place beside
black music, literature, dance, and drama. By
black cinema, I am speaking of the independent
films made since the late sixties by determined,
university-trained filmmakers who owe Hollywood
nothing at all.

If the Harlem Renaissance or, better yet, the
New Negro Movement that began in the 1920s were
to take place under today's conditions, many of
its major creatiave talents would be filmmakers.
They would celebrate and join a contemporary
black renaissance in films. Consider: Paul
Robeson's struggle to bring dignity to the Afro-
American screen image is well documented. Rich¬
ard Wright's interest in films extended beyond
the filming of NATIVE SON (1951) to include his
search for work as a screenwriter for the Na¬
tional Film Board of Canada and the drafting of
unused film scripts. Langston Hughes co¬
authored the script for WAY DOWN SOUTH (1939)
with Clarence Muse and continually sought crea¬
tive opportunities in Hollywood. In 1941, he
wrote with great clarity to his friend Arna Bon-
temps, "Have been having some conferences with
movie producers, but no results. I think only a
subsidized Negro Film Institute, or the revolu¬
tion, will cause any really good Negro pictures
to be made in America."! In 1950, Arna Bontemps
tried to stir up interest in the production of
black films in the manner of Italian neoreal¬
ism. 2 About this same time, the Committee for
Mass Education in Race Relations was set up with
the intent to "produce films that combine enter¬
tainment and purposeful mass education in race
relations." Among the consultants and members
of this committee were Katherine Dunham, Paul
Robeson, Richard Wright, Eslanda Robeson, Lang¬
ston Hughes, and Countee Cullen.^

I pinpoint the film involvement of some of the
central artist-intellectuals of the New Negro
era in order to contrast the lack, with some
important exceptions, of a comparable interest
among their successors. This short-sightedness
is both ironic and painful, for over the last
decade, a body of Afro-American films has
anerged comparable to the flowering of the "Har¬
lem Renaissance" in their cultural independence.

originality, and boldness— their appearance
marking perhaps the most significant recent de¬
velopment in Afro-American art.

This body of films, which I call the new black
cinema, is distinct from four prior episodes of
filmmaking about Afro-Americans: Hollywood films
portraying blacks before World War II, Hollywood
films after that war, films made by black inde¬
pendents like Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Wil¬
liams before WWII, and the black exploitation
movies of the late sixties and early seventies.
What separates the new black cinema from these
other episodes is its freedom from the mental
colonization that Hollywood tries to impose on
all its audiences, black and white.

The new black cinema was born out of the black
arts movement of the 1960s, out of the same con¬
cerns with a self-determining black cultural
identity. This film phenomenon drew inspiration
from black-subject films made by white directors
in the 1960s such as NOTHING BUT A MAN (1964),
COOL WORLD (1963), SHADOWS (1959), and SWEET
LOVE, BIHER (1967) but was also fired by the
creative heresies of Italian neorealism (follow¬
ing Arna Bontemps's early interest) and ulti¬
mately by an expanding international film cul¬
ture, with a particularly deep impression being
scored by African and other Third World filmmak¬
ers.

The new black cinema is a movement with many
separate beginnings in the late sixties. One
was the gathering of a nucleus of young black
filmmakers at "Black Journal," a weekly televi¬
sion magazine aired on PBS under the leadership
of Bill Greaves in New York. Another was the
tragically brief career of Richie Mason, who,
without training, took cameras into the streets
of New York to make dramatic street films (YOU
DIG IT?; GHEHO). Still another was a path¬
breaking exhibition of historical and contempor¬
ary independent black films in New York orga¬
nized by Pearl Bowser. By the time films of
great innovation and energy began emerging from
UCLA in the early seventies from Haile Gerima,
Larry Clark, and Charles Burnett, it was clear
that a new path had been broken toward a liber¬
ated black screen image.

What gives this new cinema its particular uni¬
fying character? In truth, little more than its
determined resistance to the film ideology of

Hoi lywood— but that, as we shall see, is a great
deal. Under that broad umbrella of kinship,
these filmmakers have produced work of consider¬
able diversity, pursuing various goals of aes¬
thetic individualism, cultural integrity, or
political relevance. Despite this diversity,
some core features, or defining aesthetic prin¬
ciples, can be seen to underlie many works of
the new black cinema in three directions: its
realness dimension, its relation to Afro-Ameri¬
can oral tradition, and its connections with
black music.

THE REALNESS DIMENSION

Indigenous Afro-American films project onto a
social space, as UCLA film scholar Teshome Gab¬
riel observes, noting the difference between it
and the privatistic, individualistic space of
Hollywood's film theater. It is a space carry¬
ing a commitment, in echoes and connotations, to
the particular social experience of Afro-Ameri¬
can people. It establishes only the slightest,
if any, departure from the contiguous, offscreen
reality.

While shooting BUSH MAMA (Haile Gerima, 1976),
for instance, one camera crew was accosted by
the Los Angeles police. What was there in the
sight of black men with motion picture cameras
filming in the streets of south-central Los An¬
geles (Watts) that prompted the police to pull
their guns, spread-eagle these filmmakers
against cars, and frisk them? Did they mistake
the cameras for weapons— did they sense a rob¬
bery in progress, a misappropriation of evi¬
dence? Did they suspect the cameras were
stolen, being in the inappropriate hands of the
intended victims of cinema?

The paranoia of such questions belongs to the
mentality of the Los Angeles Police Department.
The evidence of their actions is recorded objec¬
tively in cinema verite as the establishing
shots of the film. These shots make a fitting
prologue because BUSH MAMA is about the policing
of the black community by school officials, in
and out of uniform, who intrude their behavioral
directives into the most intimate reaches of its
residents. From such a documentary beginning,
one is more easily convinced that the daily ac¬
tions of its inhabitants are constantly policed
in the sense that all actions are regarded with
hostility and suspicion except those that repro¬
duce the cycles of victimization and self-

wider, more open to diverse, competing, even
accidental impressions. The basic palette of
the indigenous Afro screen is closer to that of
Italian neorealism and Third World cinema than
to Southern California. Charlie Burnett, in
KILLER OF SHEEP (1977), for instance, makes ef¬
fective use of the open frame, in which charac¬
ters walk in and out of the frame from top, bot¬
tom, and sides — a forbidden practice in the .
classical code of Hollywood (but common in Euro¬
pean and Japanese films he saw as a UCLA stu¬
dent). One further encounters fewer close-ups,
suggesting less preoccupation with the interior
emotions of individual personages.

The techniques of the new directors do not
exclude inventive camera movements and place¬
ments, but these are dictated more often by the
need of social reflection than the demands of
individual fascination. The treatment of space
generally reminds us that linear perspective was
an invention and once the exclusive preoccupa¬
tion of postmedieval Western art. By contrast,
in Afro cinema one often finds the nonlinear,
psychic space of medieval paintings, oriental
scrolls, and other non-Western media. In CHILD
OF RESISTANCE (1972), to take another example
from the prolific Haile Gerima, the camera fol¬
lows the central figure, a woman dressed in a
robe, hands bound, being transported through a
barroom into a jail cell, directly outside of
which later appears a jury box filled with jur¬
ors. Linearity is rejected as space is treated
poetically, following the coordinates of a pro¬
pulsive social idea--the social imprisonment of
black women.

TORTURE OF MOTHERS (Woody King, 1980)

The goals of the new cinema frequently cause
it to invade territory familiar to documentary
films, though this is an observation that may be
misleading. What is shared with documentary is
reality orientation. This reality dimension is
present even in Afro films of the most inten¬
sively dramatic or fantastic content, of which
there are several examples, and even in scenes
of exquisite visual beauty.

Despite this shared orientation, the term
docudrama is too loosely employed in discussion
of Afro films. Two recent films by Woodie King,
for instance, THE TORTURE OF MOTHERS (1980) and
DEATH OF A PROPHET (1981), deal with events of
recent history, the police frame-up of several
black youths in New York in 1964, and the last
day in the life of Malcolm X. They aim to be
accurate to the historical record, they use ac¬
tors and nonactors, but their intent is far more
to dramatize than document.

repression.

The social space of many new black films is
saturated with contingency. Simply, it is the
contingency of on-location shooting. But what a
location. It is a space in which invasion is
immanent. A street scene in these films is a
place where anything can happen, any bizarre or
brutal picaresque eventuality, as in A PLACE IN
TIME (Charles Lane, 1976). An interior location
attracts the feeling of prison, or refuge. A
door is a venue through which an intruder may
suddenly burst, either police or madman. The
folklore surrounding this school of adventure¬
some filmmaking is replete with art-life iro¬
nies: a film about a black man trying to live
his life without going to jail is interrupted
when the actor interpreting the role is put in
jail for nonsupport.

The intensities of such dilemmas, sometimes
the events themselves, become interwoven into
the text of the film. Everyone knows that the
anthropologist with a camera alters the village
reality he/she records. Similarly, "reality"
arranges itself differently in America for an
independent black filmmaker. Nor does this
filmmaker always maintain a cool detachment in
the face of these rearrangements. The hot rage
that suffuses SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAAADASS SONG
(Melvin Von Peebles, 1971) is one clue that the
film itself is allegorical of the furious ordeal
of a black person trying to make a mentally
independent film against the resistarvces the *
society will mount in reaction. By Larry
Clark's testimony, the sharp-edged racial por¬
trayals in PASSING THROUGH (1977) reflect his
frustrations in getting his film completed
against such resistances.

So the space occupied by an independent black
film is frequently tempered by the values of
social paranoia, volatility, and contingency and
by a more knowing acquaintance with these values
than the stable tranquility and predictable
unpredictability of an American movie set, even
when that set is background for a commercial
black movie.

A PLACE IN TIME (Charles Lane, 1977)

sentimentalized biographies. It is not noted
often enough that the liberties taken with his¬
tory for the sake of a more entertaining story
in this vaudevillainous cinema have an important
connection with ethnic distortions. For when a
people are distorted on screen, their history,
their collective cultural memory, is disfigured
at the same moment.

The subtly implanted sense of who these people
are and where they are coming from is thus a
major source of the greater internal authority
of the new black cinema— because it is a cinema
in which Afro-Americans are both the subject and
the object of consideration, and the relations of
those considerations are least tempered with by
extraneous manipulations.

Techniques associated with nonfictional cinema
appear frequently in indigenous Afro films. One
of the most piercing scenes in Ben Caldwell's
poetic and literary I AND I (1978) is staged as
a documentary interview. Similarly, the dramat¬
ic action of TORTURE OF MOTHERS is launched from
the setting of a group pooling testimony before
a tape recorder. An off-camera voice track sup¬
plants dialogue in CHILD Or RESISTANCE. And
Larry Clark, in making PASSING THROUGH, goes
beyond the typical use of archival footage as
historical flashback by inventing a documentary¬
looking sequence that places his hero, Womack,
in the midst of the eruption at Attica.

In effect, the responsibility to social real¬
ity that presides over the space of the new
black cinema has led to a number of films that
not only arise out of a "documentary" setting
but continue to unfold in a world articulated by
the techniques and strategies of nonfictional
cinema, as in Italian neorealism, but with an
Afro sensibility.

Another support of the realness dimension in
Afro cinema is its use of cultural-historical
time. The cultural identity of the people in
these films may be expressed as that of a people
with a certain history. Dramatic time is never
wholly divorced from historic time. What time
is it is a question that is inseparable from the
texture of the scene.

ORAL TRADITION

In one of the most rudimentry film situations,
the "talking head" sequence of nonfiction film,
lies a key to another source of the character of
indigenous Afro films. When our attention is
riveted by the information given by the speaker,
as in television newscasts, we may think of the
speaker as an interviewee. When this attention
is split between the information imparted and
the personality of the speaker, the manner of
speech, the cultural resonance of the words and
images, the social and cultural connotations,
the art of the message spoken, when, in short,
speech takes on the character of performance, we
may likely think of the speaker as an oral his¬
torian.

One finds oral historians in all segments of
American cinema, from the Appalachian coal min¬
ers of HARLAN COUNTRY, USA to the interviews
inserted in REDS. But the Afro speaker in films
is more likely to speak as an oral historian, if
only because of inadequate assimilation of the
bourgeois broadcast orientation that leaves one
voice interchangeable with another. The signif¬
icant contrast is between the Afro-American oral
tradition, easily the most vital vernacular tra¬
dition surviving in America, and the linearized
speech dominated by Western literacy. In Afro
oral tradition, filmmakers of the new black cin¬
ema find one of their most invaluable resources.

The screen and theatrical space of the new
black cinema is one the spectator can enter and
exit in without carrying away the glazed eyes
and the afterglow of erotic-egotistic enchant¬
ment that identifies the colonized moviegoer.

In it, both filmmakers and spectators can move
easily and interchangeably before and behind the
camera without drastic alterations of character.
This is a rare circumstance for Afro-Americans,
for as Walter Benjamin notes of another cinema.

Some of the players whom we meet in Rus¬
sian films are not actors in our sense but
people who portray themselves— and primar¬
ily in their own work process. In Western
Europe the capitalistic exploitation of
the film denies consideration to modern
man's legitimate claim to being repro¬
duced. ^

Both black and white independent filmmakers
sometimes foresake explicit cultural and histor¬
ical reference but usually for different rea¬
sons. It has been said of the affecting docu¬
mentary, THE QUIET ONE (1948), made by Sidney
Meyers, that "the boy's blackness was not given
any special significance."^ And NOTHING BUT A
MAN (1964), directed by Michael Roemer, omitted
reference to the civil rights movement taking
place at the time and place of the film's ac¬
tion. In these respects, the themes of these
two films, both respected by black cineastes,
would probably have received different treatment
by indigenous filmmakers. For example, when
Haile Gerima downplays the particulars of the
legal case in WILMINGTON 10, USA TEN THOUSAND
(1978), it is to subsume that travesty within a
broader historical framework, that of the con¬
tinuous struggle of Afro-Americans for libera¬
tion, in which ten thousand have been victimized
in the manner dealt to the Wilmington freedom
fighters. 6

Even where concrete historical reference is
absent, where the action is set in an unspeci¬
fied present tense, the idea of who black people
are historically is implicitly reflected iri
every communicative action and reflected most
consistently with the self-understanding of the
cultural group portrayed. This is true despite
variations in the sense of h-istory among indi¬
vidual filmmakers.

Because it brashly trangresses the barriers of
standardized communication, Afro oral tradition
is also a. magnet for those inclined to vaudevil-
lize, minstrelize, or sensationalize it. COTTON
COMES TO HARLEM (1970) is typical of the ex¬
ploitative use of black speech with its gratui¬
tous vaudeville jokes that harken back to the
slack-mouthed asides of Willie Best. The humor
of PUTNEY SWOPE (1969) relies mainly on a leer¬
ing treatment of black hipspeech and profanity.
And the supposedly left-radical documentary
slide show, AMERICAN PICTURES, miserably dis¬
torts and dehumanizes its black (and white) in¬
formants by framing them within its condescend¬
ing, self-indulgent liberalism.

But the real thing is abundantly available in
documentaries and ethnographic films made by
black and white filmmakers about the Afro oral
tradition or its related expressions— in films
such as NO MAPS ON MY TAPS (1980) (tapdancing),
AMERICAN SHOESHINE (1976), EPHESUS (1965), and
LET THE CHURCH SAY AMEN (1972) (folk preaching),
THE FACTS OF LIFE (1981) (blues), and THE DAY
THE ANIMALS TALKED (1981) (folktales), both by
Carol Lawrence and the southern folklore films
of William Ferris and particlarly in jazz films
like BUT THEN SHE'S BETTY CARTER (1981), MINGUS
(1966), and THE LAST OF THE BLUE DEVILS (1980).
In such films one might find a saturation of
black values and therefore an edge toward the
definition of black identity in films after
Stephen Henderson's approach to black poetry. '

It is a space open to wide-ranging possibili¬
ties, yft free of the illusionism whose effects
make mainstream commercial films so superficial¬
ly enchanting. To take one convention of the
Hollywood cinematic code for example, consider
the double pyramid that describes the individu¬
alistic perspective. One of these imaginary
pyramids extends from the four corners of the
screen towards a vanishing point within the
scene, reproductive of the depth perception of
Renaissance painting. The other perspectual
pyramid extends from these same points, converg¬
ing on the eye-screen of the single observer.
Such a perspective has great potential for fo¬
cusing attention at hierarchically staged points
of meaning, which seem to the individual observ¬
er to be channeled directly to his mind-screen,
a chamber of privileged voyeurism.

The camera of the new black cinema is not sim¬
ilarly obsessed. The focus of its attention is

In Hollywood portrayals of blacks, there is
also a historical dimension, but this sense of
history is "vaudevillainous"--the play history
of musical comedy, costume spectaculars, and

Contrasting postures toward the representation
of Afro oral history are seen in two carefully

JUMP CUT NO. 28

lustrates this less privatistic musical inten¬
tion.

the speech and "performance" of the participants
in nonfiction films but within the total config¬
uration of both nonfiction and dramatic works,
in characterization, camera strategies, princi¬
ples of montage, tempo, narrative structure, and
so forth. One can even find its features in
Charles Lane's wittily silent tragi-comedy, A
PLACE IN TIME. As in Afro orature, narrative
structure in the new films is often more epi¬
sodic and nonsequential than the well-made plot
dear to Western popular drama and more concerned
with tonal placement and emphasis. In its
search for its own voice, for a film language
uncompromised by the ubiquitous precedents of
the dominant cinema, the new black cinema is
making productive explorations into the still
undominated speech of black people.

The deeper possibilities of black music for
furnishing a creative paradigm for Afro cinema
have been advanced in Warrington Hudlin's film
concept of "blues realism," a defining attitude
and style of life.

It seems to me that if black films are to
continue to be called black films, they
will have to develop an aesthetic charac¬
ter that will distinguish them in the same
way that Japanese films, Italian neo-real¬
ist films, or even the French new wave
films are distinct. I think the blues
provides an aesthetic base and direction.
At the risk of sounding pretentious, I
feel my efforts in STREET CORNER STORIES
and the achievement of Robert Gardner in
his exceptional short film I COULD HEAR
YOU ALL THE WAY DOWN THE HALL (1976) are
the beginnings of a new school of filmmUt-
ing, a new wave, if you will. 9

In retrospect, Hudlin's formulation of blues
realism betrays the adventitiousness of artistic
theory developed In the course of resolving par¬
ticular aesthetic problems, then promoted too
broadly as a vehicle of self-definition. Blues
realism relied too narrowly on the blues concept
of novelist Ralph Ellison and was applied too
strictly to too few films. Perhaps recognizing
this, Hudlin has since distanced himself from
the concept, partly, I think, bcause his subse¬
quent films, CAPOERIA (1980) and COLOR (video,
1982), have moved away from the cinema-verite
technique of STREET CORNER STORIES that he asso¬
ciated with blues realism and partly because, at
the time of its formulation, he had not seen
several Afro films, particularly West Coast
films, that might have modified or challenged
his definitions.

THE INFLUENCE OF BLACK MUSIC

To turn from black oral tradition to black
music is really not to turn at all but only to
allow one's attention to glide from the words to
the melody of a people's indivisible cultural
expression. But what has been said about the
influence of oral tradition has been inferen¬
tial; the impact of black music on the new black
cinema is clearly intentional and well docu¬
mented. Of about twenty black filmmakers I have
interviewed recently, roughly three-fourths of
them stressed black music as a formative and
fundamental reference for their art.

The involvement with black music probes deeper
than laying a rhythmic sound track beneath im¬
ages of black people (tom-toms for the rising
redemptive energies of the collective), though
the musical sound track is a good place to be¬
gin.

Western music will menace a non-Western film
with cultural compromise. Not intrinsically,
not inevitably, Charles Lane, for one, uses
"classical" music effectively in his silent
farce, A PLACE IN TIME, with no loss to its Afro
character. But who can have escaped the subsid¬
ized itiposition of European superiority as com¬
municated by its musical "classics" which are
hawked and hustled evenywhere, underwriting, for
instance, the insistent Europeanness of so many,
say, French new wave films with their Bached and
Mozartized scores or not noticed the introduc¬
tion of nonclassical music for comic or pastoral
diversion? For the new black filmmkaker, the
technical invention and development of the art
of cinema in the West poses a burden and chal¬
lenge to his/her creative independence that is
lifted once he or she turns to the question of
music. Being artists, living under cultural
domination, they will be privy to the open sec¬
ret that the definitive musical sound of the
twentieth century originates from their people.

What is more revealing is the way music is
used. Ousmane Sembene, Africa's most indepen¬
dent film innovator, accurately observes that
"the whites have music for everything in their
films— music for rain, music for the wind, music
for tears, music for moments of emotion, but
they don't know how to make these elements speak
for themselves. "8 But, recognizing in their
music an invaluable precedent of cultural liber¬
ation, Afro filmmkakers have not pursued, with
Sembene, a "cinema of silence." (Although
Woodie King effectively omits music from THE
TORTURE OF MOTHERS, a taut reliving of a series
of brutal racist incidents.)

Filnmakeps Laxvy Clark (L) and Charlea Burnett

positioned nonfiction films, Warrington Huolin's
STREET CORNER STORIES (1978) and Haile Gerima's
WILMINGTON 10, USA TEN THOUSAND. The orienta¬
tion of STREET CORNER STORIES is observational.
Hudlin used cinema-verite techniques, exposing
his films in and around a New Haven corner store
where black men congregate before going to work,
catching their practice of black storytelling
and uninhibited rapping, not entirely unob¬
served, as their occasional straining for ef¬
fects reveals. The orientation of WILMINGTON 10
is committed. This is nowhere more apparent
than in the powerful, impassioned speeches of
the women who dominate its text, the wives and
mothers of some of the Wilmington defendants who
recount chapter and verse of liberation strug¬
gles past and present together with their uncen¬
sored opinions, directly into the camera.

It is not simply the case of one approach be¬
ing more political than the other, for both are
necessarily ideological and reflective of the
ideological diversity and oppositions within the
indigenous Afro film movement. Nor is it nar¬
rowly a question of technique: neither film, for
instance, uses a voice of God narration. Final¬
ly, as is usual with nonfiction cinema, it is a
question of selectivity. STREET CORNER STORIES
derives its Afro oral energies from the witty
irreverence of black crackerbarrel humor, its
rimes and jibes merely transposed from the porch
of the country store to the city. WILMINGTON 10
is much like an updated escaped-slave narrative,
with all of the intense political sermonizing
familiar to that genre. Both films are valid,
essentially sucessful deployments of black ver¬
bal creativity in different occasional modes.

Yet what they have to tell us about the ideo¬
logical tendencies they reflect is communicated
by the hazards of their respective orientations.
Hudlin's film was intended as a response to the
superficial sociology of works like Elliot Lie-
bow's book Talley's Corner where black streetmen
are portrayed as defeated moral opportunists,
sexual chauvinists, and exploiters and compensa¬
tory dreamers. Yet Hudlin's own portrait re¬
flects communal self-hatred without interpreting
its source in an oppressive society. One cannot
contest the reportorial accuracy of his portray¬
al nor the achievement in his film of a look of
unmanipulated realness. Still Hudlin's street-
men impress one much like those on Talley's cor¬
ner. STREET CORNER STORIES does not overcome
the danger of distortion arising from "objectiv¬
ity" without explanation or the danger of dis¬
torting Afro oral tradition by exploiting it
voyeuristical ly while presenting it as pure an¬
thropology.

As black oral history, many of the scenes in
WILMINGTON 10 are unsurpassesd in the projection
of strong, committed black speech and personal¬
ity, offered straight from the soul with earthy
articulateness. The folk songs and prison blues
of its sound track are hauntingly supportive of
the film's eloquence. Yet the film is exces¬
sively rhetorical, specifically in its last se¬
quences where unidentified black activists of no
clear connection with the Wilmington struggle
make political speeches while sitting in ab¬
stract isolation on pedestals. Their inclusion
is gratuitous, an inorganic code to the Wilming¬
ton scene from which the earlier speakers drew
their spontaneous vitality. Ironically, the
ideological tendencies of both films are pushed
towards enervation by their urging too much of
one kind of text without sufficient, balancing
context.

Blues realism as articulated by Hudlin needs
to be respected, nevertheless, as a premature
sally onto sound grounds. We do not need to
discard it but to amplify and extend it to many
different blues sensibilities and many different
registers of black musical sensibility which
help us realize an understanding of Afro films
in their variety. STREET CORNER STORIES, for
instance, captures the tonal reference of an
amoral, all-male blues world moving from country
to city on a trajectory roughly parallel to the
course from Lightin' Hopkins to Jimmie Wither¬
spoon. Alternatively, WILMINGTON 10, as already
noted, vibrates most completely to the blues of
the southern prison farm but also realizes on
the screen the equivalent of its sound-track
employment of the woman-supportive, acapella
country/folk singing of "Sweet Honey in the
Rock . "

Many of the new filmmakers attempt to trans¬
pose the tonal/structural register and cognitive
framework of several varieties of black music.
The works of others seem attached to specific
black musical worlds by virtue of their having
tapped dimensions of black experience congruent
with certain musical precedents. (One must un¬
derstand music in Afro-American culture as a
constituent element of thought, perception, and
communication. 10) Hugh Hill's LIGHT GPERA
(1975) offers an example from the "pure" end of
the visual music spectrum with his exposures and
editing of light and images in New York's Times
Square, orchestrated nonnarratively to the music
of Ornette Coleman and to the more abstract ex¬
plorations of New Jazz. The f ictive-emotional
world of Bill Gunn's GANJA AND HESS (1973) is
embedded in the resonances of a literary, self-
conscious form of gospel music. The visual im¬
agery of Barbara McCullough's experimental WATER
RITUAL #1 (1979) emerges out of a funky tiew
Jazz, saturated in African cosmology.

Ben Caldwell's I AND I, another film deeply
implicated in black music, is best understood as
a meditation in blues mode on identities of Af¬
rica in America. Its title further notes a debt
to reggae-Rastafarian consciousness. Framed by
the passage of a spirit-woman protagonist from
Africa through experiences and revelations in
America, its structure rests principally on
three "stanzas" or "choruses." First, the pro¬
tagonist becomes a black man mourning/cursing
his coffined white father. Next, she witnesses
the oral narration of an old black woman, re¬
counting the lynch-murder of her grandfather.
Finally, she metamorphoses into a contemporary
black woman, imparting a cosmological heritage
to her son.

PASSING THROUGH (Larry ClarK 1977)

Instead, their use of music in films is less
sentimental and less literary than conventional
Western practice. To get to the core of the
difference, we should recall Richard Wright's
contrast between the false sentiment of tin pan
alley songs and lyrics, with their twittering
about moonf croon, June, and the more adult,
realistic directness of the blues. Mass film
entertainment in America has never outgrown the
musical shadow work of the silent film era where
piano or organ sententiously telegraphed the
appropriate emotion to the viewer regarding the
character, place, and event on the screen, chan¬
neling the viewer's aural responses toward a
self-pitying individualism, much as the visual
cinematic code cultivates egocentric perspec¬
tive.

The distinct contribution of I AND I to the
repertory of music-based black cinema is its
impact on irr^irovisation. Still photos of urban
and rural black life are interspersed among ex¬
plicitly funky dramatic vignettes and lyrical-
prophetic stagings in an order hovering between
narrative closure and abstract association, one
idea or image giving birth to another in the
manner of an instrumental jazz soloist's far-
flung, highly colored variations on a tradition¬
al blues theme. The semantics of this film are
akin to those of the instrunffintal Jazz theater
in which the performer calls the audience to¬
gether to celebrate shared passages of life
through his/her voicing of a familiar tune. In
I AND I, blues realism is extended to blues
prophetism in a register my ears would place
close to the spiritualized. Africanized blues of
John Coltrane or Coltrane-Ellington.

The idea of black film as music is also given
wide syntactical exploration in Larry Clark's
dramatic feature, PASSING THROUGH. Here, the

Continued on p.41

In Afro film, music relates to screen action
more like the relation of guitar accompaniment
to sung blues, broadening the primary narrative
statement with comnentary that sometimes modu¬
lates its directness but just as frequently es¬
tablishes an ironic, parallel, or distancing
realism. When used. as sympathetic accompani¬
ment, the music in Afro cinema frequently shares
connotations with its audience of collective,
cultural-historic significance, in contrast to
the music of bourgeois, commercial egoism.

Though subject to abuse, the motif of tom-tom
signifying communal resurgence nevertheless il-

In Afro-American "orature" one can generally
find many distinctive and richly expressive
characteristics, including a tolerance for se¬
mantic ambiguity, a fascination with bold, ex¬
travagant metaphor, a "cool" sensibility, a
funky explicitness, and a frequently prophetic
mode of utterance. The centrality of this tra¬
dition to the new black cinema is only under¬
stood when we realize its presence not only in

EPIC THEATER AND
COUNTER CINEMA

This is the second part of an essay on Brecht and Counter-Cinema by
Alan Lovell. The first part appeared in JUMP CUT, No, 27 (1982).

—Alan Lovell

Godard's later films have been considered primary examples of "open
text" strategies. This strategy is conmitted to displacing any one level
(discourse) in the art work that claims to subordinate the other levels
(discourses). A central concern for the creators of "open texts" has been
to remove the narrator from the traditional position of dominance. It be¬
came easy to merge the open text strategy with Epic theatre. Both strate¬
gies distance the audience and encourage it to be critical of what it wit¬
nesses.

Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin's WIND FROM THE EAST represents an
emblematic film for the open text strategy. Its sound track uses a number
of voices. A few of these (the first and second female voices, the male
voice) emerge as substantial ones, which state different political posi¬
tions. Their clash seems an invitation to the spectator to join in and
work out his/her own position.

What is the nature of the film's political discussion? The film poses a
variety of issues throughout. In fact, it touches almost all the themes
of left politics in the late 1960's: critique of the consumer society,
sexuality, violence as a form of political action. Third World cinema, the
entrenched and conservative quality of the trade unions and communist par¬
ties, the threat of revisionism, the ideological power of the bourgeoisie
through their control over sign systems, and anti-Americanism.

Since no film the length of WIND FROM THE EAST can deal adequately with
such a large variety of issues, the level of discussion throughout the film
necessarily remains superficial and generally reduces these political
issues to a parade of commonplaces. Thus we hear.

Second Female Voice: The class which disposes of the material means
of production also disposes of the intellectual means of production.
Thus the ideas of those people who are deprived of the intellectual
means of production can be said to be repressed by the ruling class.

This difficulty is compounded by the film's organization. On the face
of it, the film seems to have an orderly, rational organization, marked by
division into sections, each of which is described by a specific title:

"The Strike," "The Delegate," "The Active Minorities," "The General Assem¬
bly," etc. Increasingly through the film, the content of a section bears
only a tangential relationship to its title,and matters become introduced
that have no relationship to that title. The section headed "The Active
Minorities," for example, focuses not on active minorities but on a number
of politically objectionable people. Some of the people are real, some
invented. Some of the actions they are accused of occurred, some didn't.

The orderly, rational framework is a deception, masking the film's movement
in terms of leaps, displacements, and changes in direction. It's surely a
basic demand of the open text strategy, in that itoffersthe audience sub¬
stantial positions to engage with.

However, I find a stronger reason for rejecting WIND FROI'i THE EAST as a
successful "open text." The number of voices, the speed with which they
speak', and the range of issues touched on make it difficult to follow any
given argument. On a first viewing, a spectator with some political knowl¬
edge could sense only that at some level a position is being asserted.
Further viewings, particularly if they're backed by reference to the script,
would reveal that position fairly clearly and make it possible to locate
where it was expressed in the film.

The film takes a radical left position, one with a Maoist coloring. It
posits as overall enemies the bourgeoisie and Communist Party revisionism.

A prime target is trade unions. The film sees as politically positive the¬
oretical reflection and violence. The Second Female Voice expresses these
ideas and dominates the sound track as the film progresses. It even domin¬
ates the end of the film. It remains an unchallenged voice, one of the
characteristic positions of authority and closure. And the final title
concludes as cheerfully as any socialist realist film.

If WIND FROM THE EAST does not provide a good example of an open text
film, how does it relate to Epic theatre? First, the fiction in WIND FROM
THE EAST doesn't have the substantial status it has in Brecht's plays.

There is a fiction of sorts, which seems to be an Italian western, but that
fiction has an attenuated, undeveloped quality. This difference is crucial.
In Epic theatre the fictions provide the matter for reflection. In Godard's
film, the fiction doesn't provide much substantial matter for reflection,
not as much as Brecht's story of the communist agitators in THE MEASURE
TAKEN or the astronomer's life in GALILEO do.

It has been argued that WIND FROM THE EAST is organized differently from
Brecht's plays, that it is an essay rather than a story, that the audience
is encouraged to reflect directly on ideas rather than indirectly on them
through the mediation of a story and characters. But this raises again the
question of the film's lack of intellectual coherence and substance.

The way titles and other forms intervene into the fiction provides another
point of comparison between Godard and Brecht's strategies. Brecht's meth¬
ods are relatively conservative. Principally Brecht's interventions take
the form of titles which have consistent functions, like locating the time
and place of the action or indicating and commenting on how it will develop.
Such interventions occur at traditional breaks in the drama, between scenes
and acts, for example, and provide mofiients of rest and distance from the
fiction.

Godard's interventions are more varied. As well as titles, he uses forms
like black spacing, scratched film, and solid red frames. Godard uses such
interventions quite unpredictably. Consequently, they work quite different¬
ly from Brecht's interventions. Even this is misleading, since they inter¬
rupt the fiction so frequently that WIND FROM THE EAST consists almost
entirely of disruptions.

Godard and Gorin's distance from Brechtian methods is just as marked at
other levels of the film. Where Brecht favors slow, relaxed rhythms, Godard
favors fast, urgent ones— this is especially marked on the sound track,
where words are spoken so rapidly that a minimal understanding of their
meaning is difficult. At the level of color., where Brecht uses secondary.

WIND FROM THE BAS’!-

neutral colors (browns, grays), Godard uses primary, affective ones (reds,
blues).

WIND FROM THE EAST'S basic strategy is diametrically opposed to that of
Epic theatre. The film takes an aggressive approach to the audience.
Through rapidity of movement at all levels of the film, disruption of tra¬
ditional conventions (genre, story, character, camera movement, color),
and an extravagant range of political and artistic references, the film
assaults an audience, seeking to batter it into submission. Instead of
distancing and openness, the film offers nearness and closure.

Host of Godard's films (made often with Jean-Pierre Gorin) made in the
late 1960's and early 1970's— PRAVDA, VLADIMIR AND ROSA, and BRITISH
SOUNDS— are open to similar criticisms as WIND FROM THE EAST. TOUT VA BIEN
provides an exception, and deserves separate consideration for its relation¬
ship to Brecht's ideas.

More than any of the other films, TOUT VA BIEN has a substantial fiction.
This is part of its attempt to establish a different relationship with the
audience. The film has a less aggressive stance, is more relaxed, and al¬
most genial in mood. The audience isn't assaulted and is allowed to main¬
tain a certain distance from the film, the first half of the film, the
description of the strike, uses broad comic conventions plus songs and
direct statement, and it suggests the kind of popular, political drama that
theatre artists like Erwin Piscator in Germany, Joan Littlewood in Britain,
and Roger Planchon in France have worked for.

The second half establishes the film as basically operating in a tradi¬
tional genre, critical social drama. A bourgeois couple is depicted. The
film shows them put into a state of crisis which forces them to reconsider
their relationship and their social situation. In situating the relation¬
ship socially, TOUT VA BIEN is within the genre, not outside it. The audi¬
ence is implicitly invited to approve of the development of the characters.
The characters' growth in self-criticism and self-awareness is undoubtedly
offered in a positive way.

The interventions in TOUT VA BIEN can be seen as a way of undermining
"the bourgeois couple in crisis" genre, but if they are, a difficulty
arises. The fiction advocates positions that Godard wants his audience to
approve of and which most of his sympathetic critics do approve of: support
for strikes, criticism of the Communist Party and the unions, hostility to
the consumer society, awareness of the relevance of sexuality to politics.

If the fiction is undermined, are these positions undermined as well?

This interpretive difficulty arises because, like most of Godard's later
films, TOUT VA BIEN comes as the product of contradictory impulses, a poli¬
tical one and a modernist art one. The political impulse leads towards
realistic representation and/or direct statement. The modernist one leads
towards a separation between art and reality, an emphasis on the convention¬
al nature of art and the consequent freedom of the artist to manipulate/
displace these conventions. TOUT VA BIEN puts the weight on the first
impulse: WIND FROM THE EAST puts it on the second. Neither avoids the
contradiction.

Brecht and Godard also dif^e- in the nature of the reflection they ask
for from their audiences. Brecht asks for direct, empirical reflection, in
line with his view that his plays model what the world is really like:

"People needn't behave like this", or "Things don't have to be this way."
Godard asks for theoretical reflection at a certain level of abstraction.

One of the issues TOUT VA BIEN provokes is its ability to generate the¬
oretical reflection. Take the opening sequence, which shows the signing of
checks for the people involved in the making of the film. The sequence
establishes that large sums of money are paid to people who make films, and
that stars are necessary. These are conrionplaces, well known to anybody
even mildly interested in the cinema. The significant question, however,
deals with the relation between the film as economic product and the film
as artistic product. This involves thinking about TOUT VA BIEN in terms of
concepts like capitalism, base-superstructure relationships, ideology. Yet
a sequence which shows checks being signed will probably not provoke reflec¬
tion in such conceptual terms, except by people who already use those con¬
cepts and have little need to be provoked into using them.

Films like WIND FROM THE EAST and TOUT VA BIEN have been identified as

JUMP CUT NO. 28

WmD FROM THE EAST

the result of a political break in Godard's career away from the apolitical
cinema of the New Wave with its enthusiasm for Hollywood movies towards a
Marxist cinema constructed out of an opposition to Hollywood, a Counter-
Cinema. The problems Godard's later films raise can be better understood
if his break is seen as much more qualified and politically ambiguous than
critics usually acknowledge. To achieve this understanding, it's necessary
to resituate Godard within the general cultural, political position of
Cdhiere du Cin&ma.

In summary outline, Cdhiers' position can be described as their attempt
to join two antithetical positions: justify their positive enthusiasm for
(1) Hollywood films, and for (2) the development of the cinema as a means
of direct personal expression. The antithesis lies in the way the industri¬
al, capitalist organization of Hollywood production creates maximum diffi¬
culties for individual expression.

Cah-Levs solved the critical problem by effectively ignoring the produc¬
tion system (yet, it was the nature of this system that Andr€ Bazin called
attention to in his critique of the auteur theory) and by emphasizing the
concept of individual genius (the auteur). How the auteur expressed him/
her self was left mysterious. Not surprisingly, Andrew Sarris, the U.S.
exponent of the auteur theory, talked about "an elan of the soul" in his
attempt to account for cinematic auteurism. This amounts to a schizophrenic
attitude to individual expression in filmmaking, and it is dramatized by
Godard in LE MEPRIS, where Fritz Lang goes serenely on making his film of
the Odyssey despite having an interfering producer (Jack Palance) in the
worst Hollywood tradition.

If Cahiers' enthusiasm had centered on a cinema other than Hollywood,
they would have faced a less intense problem, though very few cinemas are
amenable to an individualist aesthetic (for example, U.S. avant-garde would
offer a better choice than Hollywood). But the enthusiasm for Hollywood
wasn't accidental; rather, that choice of preferred object of criticism de¬
rived from a larger cultural configuration, the struggle of the European
intelligentsia to come to terms with mass culture and with that society,
the United States, that almost seemed to be defined by the existence of
mass culture.

Cahiers du Cinema’s ideas reveal the strains and confusions produced by
this configuration. French film criticism in the years immediately after
the Second World War inherited a vital part of Surrealism's orientation to
the cinema, a sympathetic interest in the mass entertainment film. Cahiers
took over this interest but not its framework, one that derived from Freud-
ianism and an anti -art stance. For the surrealist, the mass entertainment
film, less inhibited by the controls of art, was more likely to reveal the
workings of the unconscious— a trait highly valued by the surrealists.

In contrast, Freudianism established no strong presence in Cahiers' posi¬
tions; a reverence for art is one of the most striking features of Cahiers'
critical writing. Their discussion of all aspects of the cinema is full of
references and allusions to traditional art. As part of their project was
to establish the, cinema on a par with the traditional arts; the auteur the¬
ory was Cahiers' principal critical method for dealing with Hollywood in
this way. Like the traditional arts, Hollywood supposedly had great art¬
ists. Given the historical proximity of Surrealism, Cahiers respect for art
is surprising. What Cahiers lacked, in contrast to Surrealism, was a criti¬
cal politics, the kind which allowed the surrealists to identify traditional
art as a powerful support of the established social order. Cahiers' criti¬
cal writing was apolitical, veering towards an overt Right-wing politics
through an admiration for individualism and violence. Bazin's Left-liberal-
ism made an obvious exception and led to his giving the auteur theory only
qualified support.

In his early days as a critic, before he became a New Wave film director,
Godard provided a precise estimate of Cahiers du Cinema's genejral prdject:

We won the day in having it acknowledged in principle that a film by
Hitchcock, for example, is as important as a book by Aragon. Film
auteurs, thanks to us, have finally entered the history of art.

{Godard on Godard, ed. Tom Milne; London: Seeker & Warburg, 1972, p.

147)

Godard's own criticism fell completely within that project. He saw art as
the direct expression of individuals, and the indivudalism as uncompromis¬

ing:

The cinema. ..is an art. It does not mean teamwork. One is always
alone; on the set as before the blank page. {Godard on Godard, p. 76)

A film's interest and importance depends on its expressing culturally
sanctified themes, primarily of a philosophical kind:

How does one recognize Nicholas Ray's signature? Firstly by the com¬
positions which can enclose an actor without stifling him and which
somehow manage to make ideas as abstract as Liberty and Destiny both
clear and tangible. {Godard on Godard, p. 60)

Inside this basic position we see Godard's tendency to ask the kind of
essentialist questions that have long stultified aesthetics like those in
Bazin's What Is Cinema? and to unquestioningly accept abstractions like
"beauty." Politics is only fleetingly present in such criticism, though
it's worth noting Godard's frequent references to Andre Malraux. Godard
undoubtedly responds to Malraux's fascination with the intermingling of
violence and art.

Even if Cahiers' general position had been a more interesting one, God¬
ard's development of it would have been compromised by the intellectual
shortwindedness and restlessness evident in his writing. He introduces a
substantial idea, quickly drops it, and brings up another idea. He makes
constant references over a wide area of cultural and intellectual activity
in his youthful critical writings, but these references never rise above
the level of decoration.

If, as the articulation of an intellectual position, Godard's early film
criticism cannot be taken seriously, it does have other qualities. The
restlessness, puns and allusions, and shifts from one idea to another com¬
bine to give Godard's writing an abstract energy. It consistently aims at
effects of ingenuity, surprise and unpredictability. These writerly ef¬
fects are sought often at the expense of the ideas being developed.

Even looked at in this way, Godard's writing cannot be validated as cri¬
ticism. Whatever energy it generates, reading it remains a frustrating ex¬
perience. Its vices--intellectual incoherence and lack of stamina— remain
vices.

★ ★ ★

His attempt to use cinema as a form of personal expression shaped God¬
ard's early films up until PIERROT LE FOU. To construct films as substan¬
tial, crafted objects, using consequently large budgets and big crews,
appeared to be the main block to personal expression. Now, instead, God¬
ard conceived of his films as rough sketches which can be made cheaply with
small crews.

The rough-sketch film, for Godard, derived from a cinema verite-influ-
enced approach or at least exploited the same kind of cinematic effects as
the practitioners of cinema-verite: the unsteadiness of the frame through
a hand-held camera; the sudden, jerky camera movement of a newsreel approach
to staged action; the violent contrasts produced by the use of available
light. Godard's editing accepts the problems created by this camera style—
especially that shots can't be natched and smoothly joined. Fictions are
constructed in a way congruent with the cinema-verite approach. Narratives
build on simple situations which are not filled in by detailed development
or complex characterization.

This sort of filtimaking can be construed as an attack on Hollywod cin¬
ema. In fact, it was an attack on a certain kind of French cinema {cinema
du papa--the films of Claude Autant Lara, Rene Clement, Jean Delannoy, the
writers Aurenche and Bost), and it, in fact, affirmed a certain kind of
Hollywood cinema (the small-scale thriller, the B-film, the productions of
Monogram Studios). In making this affirmation, Godard was following the
surrealists who also had celebrated "naive"* Hollywood films and made "crude"
films like UN CHIEN ANDALOU as a protest against Art Cinema a generation
earlier.

It's difficult for European intellectuals to reproduce Hollywood genre
films, at least with any degree of conviction. Almost by definition, they
remain estranged from such forms of mass art. Of those who have worked in
this territory, Jean-Pierre Melville perhaps came closest to making con¬
vincing versions of the thriller gangster film. Formed in the self-con¬
sciously intellectual milieu of Cahiers du Cinema, Godard, despite an
affection for Melville's work, was unable to follow him in his efforts. to
create pure genre films.

Godard's early films were basedonan ironic awareness of this situation.
They both re-created Hollywood genre films and at the same time by devices
like mixed genres, displaced conventions, overt references, marked a dis-
stance from them. Godard clearly wanted to validate his films through a
strong intellectual dimension. He was not content to express ideas through
mise-en-scene in the way he claimed Nicholas Ray did, but he gave ideas an
overt presence in his films.

Paradoxically, in all Godard's films a distance is usually established
from these ideas. Sometimes, as in Jean-Pierre Melville's appearance in
BREATHLESS, the ideas turn out to be nonsensical; sometimes the context
leaves their status uncertain— in VIVRE SA VIE an actual philosopher ap¬
pears, Brice Parain, to discuss his ideas in a fictional film with a fic¬
tional prostitute. Sometimes ideas are deliberately undercut— e.g., Roger
Leenhardt's monologue in UNE FEMME MARINE is followed by the emergence of a
sleepy child who gives his own absurd monologue.

It's not clear in what way Godard's early films are being offered to
their audiences. In the films, there is a double distancing— from cinema
as a form of popular entertainment, and from cinema as a form of intellec¬
tual statement. This double distancing effectively confesses the absence
of a more positive strategy. Godard's radical uncertainty in this respect
distinguishes him from his fellow Cahiers directors— Francois Truffaut,
Claude Chabrol, Jacques-Doniol Valcroze, and Eric Rohmer (Jacques Rivette
is probably closest to Godard)— all of whom have more confidence in cinema¬
tic strategies based on fictions, through they use fictions which draw more
on traditional art cinema forms that critique bourgeois life than on Holly¬
wood genre films.

* *

From PIERROT LE FOU onwards, the fictions in Godard's films become in¬
creasingly attenuated. In effect, he reverses the relationship between the
fiction and the disruptions, so that the disruptions structure the film.
This change of strategy has been taken by cHtfes as a mark of Godard's
politicization and his development of a critique of Hollywood cinema.

Central to this critical account of Godard's work is the critic's iden¬
tification of Hollywood cinema with a specific fictional strategy. This
cinema, according to James Roy McBean, in his introduction to the script of
WIND FROM THE EAST,

pretends to ignore the presence of the spectator, pretends that what
is being said and done on the movie screen Is not aimed at the spec¬
tator, pretends that the cinema is a "reflection of reality" yet all
the time it plays on his emotions and capitalizes on his identifica¬
tion/projection mechanisms in order to induce him subtly, insidiously,
unconsciously to participate in the dreams and fantasies that are
marketed by bourgeois, capitalist society. (WEEKEND and WIND FROM THE

JUMP CUT NO. 28

EAST, ed. Nicholas Fry, trans. Marianne Sinclair and Danielle Adkinson,
London: Lorrimer, 1972, p. 112).

The argument derives from traditional suspicions about fiction, the ef¬
fect of which is described in terms of lies, delusions, misleading appear¬
ances. In a modern form, such criticism has been the basis of a pervasive,
half-articulated response on the part of intellectuals to mass art, the
workings of which are thought to be analogous to processes which produce
loss of consciousness, like drug consumption. In recent film criticism,
this suspicion is often cast in a psychoanalytic idiom, and film viewers
are seen as remaining within the Imaginary, as defined by Jacques Lacan.

Such a critique of mass art is at best partial and politically naive;
at worse, it is misleading and politically reactionary. To produce fic¬
tions offering themselves as descriptions of the real is one of Hollywood's
lesser artistic strategies. To produce "unself-conscious" fictions cer¬
tainly remains a dominant Hollywood strategy, and this unself-consciousness
is sometimes offered as a definition of realism. But if Hollywood films do
work within this definition, usually Hollywood presents its fictions not as
descriptions of the real but as precisely the opposite, as fantasies, make-
believe entertainment that works from a refusal to be dominated by the real.
The global success of such types of presentations can be seen, for example,
in ordinary conversation, where "Hollywood" is used as a synonym for "un¬
real ity"""pure Hollywood," or "How Errol Flynn won the war," etc.

This critique about Hollywood "realism," through its preoccupation with
fiction, masks the relation films like WIXID FROM THE EAST have with artis¬
tic strategies often found in Hollywood films. Certain Hollywood films
seem based on an idea of audiences that can only be captured by assaulting
them--through speed, shock, disruptiveness, and discontinuity. This aesthe¬
tic approach is characteristic of a sector of Hollywood cinema which includes
the crime film, crazy comedy, and cartoon films— all of which Godard wrote
admiringly about in his early criticism. In making films later in his car¬
eer like WIND FROM THE EAST, Godard perhaps owed most to the films of Frank
Tashlin. WIND FROM THE EAST might well be thought of a film which intro¬
duces "gags" into all levels of its construction.

However, it isn't self-evident that this strategy produces an art less
amenable to American capitalism than one based on the production of fic¬
tions as descriptions of an external reality. Its aesthetic methods cele¬
brate qualities like aggression and dynamism, ones central to the U.S.
capitalist enterprise. In a way, such tactics articulate a significant
cultural configuration; Godard's political -cinematic shift proves another
way of "rediscovering the U.S."

* * *

The Dziga Vertov Group is credited with the making of WIND FROM THE EAST.
It's not clear this group ever amounted to more than Godard and Jean-Pierre
Gorin. However, the homage to Vertov provides a valuable insight into God¬
ard's later films. Why should Vertov be chosen rather than Eisenstein,

Shub, Pudovkin, Kuleshov or Dovzhenko as the group's emblem?

Of all the Soviet filimakers, Vertov is closest to Futurism with its
celebration of the modern world, defined in terms of the modern world's
technological, urban character, and its effor:s to find artistic forms
appropriate to the machine structures, speed and discontinuities of this
"new" world. The United States, of course, represented the epitome of this
new world. Godard's films show an excitement similar to that of the Futur¬
ists about the modern world, and like them, Godard connects this excitement
with the United States. In Godard's earlier films the excitement manifests
itself more within the fiction: cars are prominent, with travel and mobil¬
ity treated enthusiastically. In later Godard films, this tendency mani¬
fests itself more on the level of form.

Godard, in fact, reproduces Dziga Vertov's split attitude to U.S. cul¬
ture. Hollywood cinema is rejected as a cineriia of illusion, yet U.S.
dynamism and innovativeness are admired. The importance of both these
qualities for Hollywood films isn't noted by either Vertov or Godard.

Godard does not simply mimic Vertov's work. WIND FROM THE EAST isn't
just a remake of Vertov's MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA. There are noteworthy
differences in the films, which are highlighted by the directors' atti¬
tudes to cinema itself. Vertov sees cinema in the optimistic perspective
of technological transformation. To him, the camera becomes representative
of technology, and, in MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA, it is celebrated as a mar¬
velous toy with a magical power to transform. Godard's evident enthusiasm
for cinema is compromised by his pessimistic perspective on sign systems
because of their ability to lie about the world and prevent its transfor¬
mation. This pessimism produces in Godard's work a Dadaist strain, reveal¬
ing an impulse to destroy cinema as well as to celebrate it.

The characters' individualism in Godard's films, their isolation, the
way they relate to others critically and intellectually, has often been
noted. Such a conception of character bears the marks of Cartesianism,
though Godard's Cartesianism seems strongly marked by Existentialism. Such
a perspective not only influences Godard's conception of character but the
overall structuring of his fictions. At the characters' center is the
individual critical-ego trying to come to terms with an alien world that
lacks value and meaning. This lack of value distinguishes the modern
world--Godard sees indications that in the past the world did have value
and meaning. In the modern world, violent action seems the most viable

choice.

As the fictions lose their centrality in Godard's films, and as politics
becomes more overt, Cartesianism becomes, if anything, more pronounced.
Commentary replaces plot as the organizer of the films. These commentaries
are cast in the mode of critical questioning. They offer themselves as a
political version of the Cartesian strategy of systematic doubt, a refusal
to accept the easy and obvious answer^ offered by bourgeois society. But
the character of the commentary, the relentlessness of the questioning, its
wideness of range, the speed and force with which it is delivered make it
difficult for an audience to respond intellectually. As it is worked out
on the sound track, the strategy doesn't favor critical inquiry.

LETTER TO JANE focuses the problem. Given Jane Fonda's situation as a
woman and film star, given her radicalization and her relationship as an
actress with Godard and Gorin, what she represents overall demands careful
examination. The film's opening acknowledges this, but the acknowledgement
proves rhetorical. What Fonda represents is subjected not to critical in¬
quiry but aggressive denunciation. One photograph becomes the subject for
a number of dubious and crude assertions which often have McCarthyite over¬
tones.

The following section of commentary is a good example of the methods in
LETTER TO JANE:

JPG: We can find this same expression already in the 1940's used by
Henry Fonda to portray an exploited worker in the future fascist
Steinbeck's GRAPES OF WRATH.

JLG: And even further back in the actress's paternal history, within
the history of the cinema, it was still the same expression ^
that Henry Fonda used to cast a profound and tragic look on the
black people in YOUNG MR. LINCOLN made by the future admiral of
the Navy, John Ford.

JPG: One can also find this expression on the opposite side as John
Wayne expresses his deep regrets about the devastation of the
war in Vietnam in THE GREEN BERETS. In our opinion this expres¬
sion has been borrowed, principle and interest, from the free
trade mark of Roosevelt's New Deal. In fact it's an expression
of an expression and it appears inevitably by chance just as the
talkies were becoming a financial success. This expression
talks, but only to say how much it knows about the stock market
crash, for example. But says nothing more than how much it
knows . . .

A series of links is made: Jane Fonda with Henry Fonda; Henry Fonda
with THE GRAPES OF WRATH and the "future fascist" John Steinbeck; via THE
GRAPES OF WRATH^ Henry Fonda is then linked with YOUNG MR. LINCOLN and
the "future admiral of the Navy," John Ford; from Ford, there is an implicit
link with John Wayne and his support for the Vietnam war; all of this is
then linked to the New Deal. All the connections are flimsy ones. They
allow Godard and Gorin to present U.S. history as an inevitable movement
from the New Deal to Vietnam. Hollywood becomes simply identified as the
ideological arm of capitalism. Politics, art, economics, ideology join
together; Left and Right merge into each other. From the starting point
of a single news photograph, Jane Fonda's efforts to support the North
Vietnamese is made to seem an integral part of imperialism's activities.

It would be naive to be uncritical of Jane Fonda's politics, but the
overall aggressiveness of LETTER TO JANE— those insistent voices on the
sound track, the yoking together of so many disparate features into a
radical denunciation of the world, all of which are characteristic fea¬
tures of Godard's later films--call to mind Roman Jakobson's judgement of
Mayakovsky's poetry:

If we should attempt to translate Mayakovsky's mythology into the
language of speculative philosophy the exact equivalent of this
enmity would be the opposition of 'ego' and 'not ego.' it would be
hard to find a more adequate name for the enemy. (Edward G. Brown,
Mayakovsky t Princeton: Princeton University Press).

Godard has been an extremely influential figure in cinema for the cul¬
tural Left for a long time now. But if the obvious roadblocks his work
has run into are to be avoided by others, he needs to be displaced from
the central position he has occupied.

The account of Godard I have been challenging can be found in numerous
books and articles. The most straightforward accounts of the position can
be found in Peter Wollen's essay, "Counter Cinema: VENT Q'ESJ" {Afterimage^
No. 4, Autumn 1972) and in James Roy McBean's Film and Revolution (Blooming¬
ton: Indiana University Press, 1975).

Colin McCabe's Godard: Images^ Sounds^ Politics (London: BFI/Macmi1lan,
1980) appeared after I had written this essay. It makes a substantial
enough case for Godard to deserve to be dealt with separately. However,
its account does not basically differ from the one I have discussed. _

Godard and Gorin ’s

Left Politics, 1967-72

'--Julia Lesage

To consider an artist's politics, especially
a didactic artist's, raises key issues about aes¬
thetics. To evaluate Jean-Luc Godard's politics
in his explicitly Left political films of 1967-
72, we should ask what principles he applied to
his work, why he did so, and what the historical
context of those films was. These issues are
important to consider critically because the
artistic strategies which Godard then developed
have since widely influenced other radical film¬
makers worldwide. Furthermore, the events in
France in May 1968 influenced many artists and
intellectuals, who, like Godard, turned with a
renewed interest to the aesthetic concepts of
Bertolt Brecht.

Godard's political evolution was gradual.
Aesthetically, he used Brechtian techniques in
an anti-illusionist way for social comment and
critique years before he turned to the Left. In

his public persona as a lionized artist, in the
mid-sixties, he first lived out the role of the
alienated genius making pure cinema. Then he
denounced the film industry and attacked French
society from a leftist position in interviews
and in his films. And when he put explicitly
political issues into cinematic form, this led
in turn to a drastic decline in how the public
would accept his works.

Godard stated that the May '68 civil rebellion
in France had a decisive effect on him, an effect
clearly seen in his films. In addition, his
post-63 films referred to their French far-Left
"Maoist" milieu. Often the films' subject matter
dealt with very topical political issues. The
films also raised many theoretical issues. Yet
they always treated their political subject mat¬
ter with fonnal innovation. To criticize the
political perspective of Godard's films from
1967-72, the critic must enter the dialogue on
Marxist and modernist grounds. Godard's films

of that period demanded both a specifically poli¬
tically response and a politically-oriented aes¬
thetic response as they strove to present social
and political issues in a "non-bourgeois" film
form.

Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin, his co-worker
of those years, frequently gave tongue-in-cheek
interviews. These interviews reflected aesthetic
positions and referred to political events, but
incompletely or unsatisfyingly. However, Godard
and Gorin made their 1967-72 films, such as LE
GAI SAVOIR, VENT D'EST, PRAVDA, and LETTER TO
JANE, as "essays," essays about political issues
and about radical film aesthetics. They provide
more complete statements of Godard and Gorin's
political concerns than does any interview, but
they offer that information in a non-linear,
witty, and distanciated way. As I discuss here
the political ideas found in the 1967-72 films,

I have often had to separate these ideas out
from their filmic presentation. Of necessity

Jean-Lua Godard

here, I have flattened and simplified political
concepts. They must finally be reconsidered
within the artistic complexity of each film as
a whole.'

GODARD'S POLITICS BEFORE 1968

Godard stated that the first time he deliber- •
ately tried to make a "political" film was in
1966 with MASCULIN-FEMININ.2 Somber cinematog¬
raphy, contemporary Paris as seen by its youth,
male adolescent idealism, conversation after con¬
versation carried on in interview form--these
elements in the film made critics call it a
sociological "document. "3 Godard did not give
the characters in MASCULIN-FEMININ much overt
political sophistication, yet critics noted how
much these adolescents talked about Marx. The
film also continued Godard's protest against
U.S. involvement in Vietnam, which he had
started in PIERROT LE FOU and continued in suc¬
cessive films.

Then in 1966 Godard openly criticized the
film industry and denounced the way capitalist
financing and ideological expectations shaped
films. He made f^SCULIN-F^MININ, he said, to
reject a cinema of "spectacle." That kind of
film had come to Europe through Hollywood but
was also found in the USSR.^ Furthermore, under
French law, scriptwriters and directors did not
have professional respect. Regulations that
began during the Vichy regime still controlled
them; they had to get legal authorizations to
make films, get licensed as directors and tech¬
nicians, and follow strict procedures for film
financing. Aware of how the film and television
industries conveyed bourgeois ideology, Godard
had no illusions about commercial cinema's being
influenced by any kind of workers' movement, for
he saw people as universally conditioned to tra¬
ditional ideas about cineriia. He said even those
workers who knew how to go on strike for higher
salaries would still reject the films that could
help them the most.

For many years Godard railed against the com¬
mercial system that required directors to make
"clowns" of themselves. He hated having to pro¬
duce a script for inspection in order to finance
feature films. In 1966, Godard called himself
both a sniper against the system and a prisoner
within it: these two roles seemed part of the
same thing. ^ Later he said that he had escaped
from a stultifying bourgeois family into the
world of pure cinema. But he found after a few
years as director that the commercial production-
distribution process had trapped him within an
equally stultifying but larger bourgeois family.
With LE GAI SAVOIR he partially dropped out of
this route for making films. Certainly his
films after WEEKEND did not reach people in com¬
mercial theaters. Yet in 1972, after returning
to big-budget feature film production with TOUT
VA BIEN, Godard and Gorin denied that they had
ever been able to leave the system. They noted
that the Dziga-Vertov Group films and the ones
made by Godaril^ himself in the 1968-72 period had
been financed primarily by national television
networks and by Grove Press. ^

After breaking his partnership with Gorin,

Godard turned to one of his other great loves,
television. In 1974 he set up, with his new co¬
director Anne-Marie Midville, an experimental TV
and video studio in Grenoble. As early as 1966
he had told interviewers that his greatest dream
was to direct news programs in television. He
also described the two wide-screen color films
he was making then, MADE IN USA and DEUX OU TROIS
CHOSES, as aatualiteet or news reports:

All my films derive from intimate connec¬
tions with the country's situation, from
news documents, perhaps treated in a parti¬
cular way, but functioning in relation to
contemporary reality. 7

Godard thought of making a new program as a
fabricated event, often fictional, that the

social reality behind surface appearances. In
this he always remained very close to Bertolt
Brecht's concept of realism and to the Russian

filmmaker Dziga Vertov's concept of news. God¬
ard developed this concept of "the news" long
before coining the name "Dziga Vertov Group."

In 1967 LA CHINOISE presented "news" of Vietnam
in a little Brechtian skit. This skit followed
a political discussion the characters had had
about the best form for cine.’atic newsreels.
Guillaume, a self-professed "Brecntian" actor,
said he had heard a lecture by Cina.iathfeque
director Henri Langlois proving that the film
pioneer Lumiere had filmed exactly the same
things Picasso, Renoir and Manet were painting
then; railroad stations, public places, people
playing cards, people leaving factories, and
tramways. Thus Lumiere seemed like one of the
last great Impressionists, like Proust. But
M^lifes, Guillaume said, filmed fantasies which
revealed actual social and technological possi¬
bilities; for example, M^lils filmed the trip
to the moon:

Well, he made newscasts. Maybe the manner
in which he did it made them reconstituted
newscasts, but it was really news. And
I'll go even further: I'll say that M^lies
was Brechtian. 8

At this point the group launched into a short
analysis of why Meliks was Brechtian. They drew
their analysis from Mao's On Contradiction. Mao
said Marxism depended on concrete analysis. To
analyze a situation, one had to see things as
complex, determined by many factors. People had
to trace out and analyze the many contradictions
in things and phenomena and to study problems
under their different aspects, not just under one
main one. The characters proclaimed that Marx,
Engels, Lenin and Stalin had taught them consci¬
entiously to study situations, starting from ob¬
jective reality and not from personal, subjective
desire. 9

Such political-aesthetic lessons seemed to re¬
flect Godard's own views. Also in LA CHINOISE,
Godard had the characters eliminate writers'
names from a blackboard until only Brecht's name
was left. Yet even though Godard had defined
himself as a "Left-wing anarchist" then,10 in
many ways LA CHINOISE scoffed at its idealist
revolutionaries. In 1967 Godard still romanti¬
cally strove to capture an instant— an instant
of decision, yes, but not yet showing social
mechanisms capable of being specifically changed.
In his work from 1967-1972, he came to examine
Left revolution, although since then he has not
always continued in the same vein.

GODARD'S POLITICAL ACTIVISM

LOIN DE VIETNAM significantly brought together
French directors to work collectively to create
a political film. These same directors would
mobilize their forces to react with mass demon¬
strations against Cinematheque director Henri
Langois' firing in early 1968. The Langlois
affair provided a rallying point for French in¬
tellectuals, especially in the way that it
brought to light their intense dissatisfaction
with the strict control the Gaul list government
maintained over cultural and intellectual af¬
fairs. In February 1968, the Administrative
Council of the Cin^ath^que, under pressure
from the CNC {Centre nationate.. du cinema) and
with the agreement of Minister of Culture Andre
Malraux, summarily decided not to renew Lang¬
lois' contract as artistic and administrative
director of the Cin^ath^que Francaise. After
massive protests in the press, Malraux relented
and offered Langlois the position of artistic
administrator only, which meant that he could
collect films but not program their showing.

Since the Cinenath^que was the only place to
show many radical films, almost all French film¬
makers found Malraux's compromise gesture un¬
acceptable. They rejected it as fascist.

Godard led the protests against the govern¬
ment. He called press conferences with other
filtmakers in which he expressed his total dis¬
satisfaction with the Gaul list system of cul¬
tural control. He demonstrated that the govern¬
ment controlled almost all commercial film
production through the ORTF and CNC, but that
now the CNC wanted to extend its control to the
independent showings of films, often radical
ones, in the cine clubs and the Cinlmathdque.H

France saw a quick and overwhelming reaction
against Langois* firing. On February 14, 1968,
Godard led 3,000 demonstrators against the police
guarding the Cinematheque. He was slightly
wounded. Immediately forty French directors
forbade the CinOTatheque to show their films.

Many continued to work with Godard and to get
other filtimakers and filrnnakers* heirs to refuse
to let their films be shown at the Cinematheque
unless Langlois was reinstated with full powers.
The rapidity with which the street protests took
place, the government's total misunderstanding
of the French intellectual climate, and the
breaking down of factions among intellectuals
to arrive at a consensus about the need for
united action— all of these factors made the
Langlois affair prefigure May's university pro¬
tests.

During the civil rebellion in May-June 1968,
filtmakers joined with dissatisfied radio and
television workers to form a communication
workers' organization: the Etats G^n^raux du
Cinema. Godard's main participation in the
^tats Generaux was to interrupt and close down
the 1968 Cannes film festival. On May 16 Godard
met at Cannes with the Committee for the Defense
of the Cin^ath^que. Presumably they had ori¬
ginally planned to use the festival to push the
Langlois affair a step further, but at their
meeting Godard convinced his fellow filtmakers

JUMP CUT NO. 28

to occupy the largest festival screening room
to close it down. They did this on May 18.

Many of the cineastes gathered at Cannes were
already questioning such a festival's very func¬
tion at that point in French history. Judges
withdrew from the jury; directors withdrew their
films. The radicals had effectively shut the
festival down.

GODARD AND THE MAY-JUNE 1968
FRENCH CIVIL REBELLION

Godard was profoundly affected, as were many
French intellectuals, by the May-June civil re¬
bellion in 1968. Europe, especially France, had
seen the embourgeoiment of the parliamentary
Left and thus the decline of an effective Left
opposition to capitalism, but the May '68 events
in France revived a previously muted revolution¬
ary consciousness and demonstrated the students'
potentially key role as a dynamic radical force.
Later, after the civil rebellion, Marxist theo¬
reticians turned once again to examine French
society to examine capitalism's weaknesses— to
see wher^ the contradictions could be aggravated,
where the revolution might occur. Political
authors Henri Lef^bvre, Andre Gorz, Louis Al¬
thusser, and Godard's friend, Andre Glucksmann
described conditions leading up to the May civil
rebellion in such terms as the proletarization
of the white collar working forces, conditions
causing student dissatisfaction with higher edu¬
cation, ever-increasing corporate reliance on
the mass media to create consensus and increase
consumption, and a greater role which bourgeois
ideological dominance played in controlling
class conflict and in reproducing capitalist
production relations. 12

Not only students but workers played a lead¬
ing role in the 1968 revolt. Rebelling in the
work force were young technicians, highly
skilled but with no decision-making power, and
also young unskilled workers, who were underpaid
and performed boring, repetitive tasks. The
striking workers consistently raised qualitative
demands rather than just quantitative wage de¬
mands. Correspondingly, life-style issues, the
politics of daily life, and workers' control
(described by Godard as the "dictatorship of
the proletariat") became key issues in Godard's
films from 1968 on.

In France the largest and strongest Left-wing
organization is the Communist Party (the PCF),
which controls the largest labor union (the CGT:
Confederation general du travail). The PCF has
a whole mechanism for diffusing its ideas, and
controls a certain stable percentage of the vote
in each election. In France, it seems conserva¬
tive to many radicals, since its goals of mater¬
ial progress reflect those of the middle class
and its parliamentary role has never beeri revo¬
lutionary. In the 1968 revolt the PCF turned
the tide against the demonstrators by cooperat¬
ing with the government.

A widespread critique of the Cofimunist Party
followed in the wake of the 1968 uprisings. Re¬
jection of the PCF characterized all of the "Mao¬
ist" groups in France, who turned to the Chinese
Cultural Revolution as a model for both political
and social theory and practice. Godard, follow¬
ing this general trend, criticized in his films
from 1968 on, especially in PRAVDA and VENT
D'EST, Communist failures to be truly revolu¬
tionary, both in France and in other European
countries.

It was in such an atmosphere that Godard com¬
mitted himself to working as Marxist filnmaker.
From 1968 to 1973, he stated repeatedly that he
was working collectively. He was never tied to
a party or a Maoist group, although the politics
evidenced in his films seem loosely "Maoist."

For about three years he drastically reduced the
technical complexity and expense of his filming,
lab work, compositions, and sound mix. Partly
he wanted to demonstrate that anyone could and
should make films. He did not concern himself
with creating a parallel distribution circuit.

He said most political films were badly made,
so the contemporary political filmmakers had a
two-fold task: They had to find new connections,
new relations between sound and image. And they
should use film as a blackboard on which to
write analyses of socio-economic situations.

Godard rejected films, especially political
ones, based on feeling. People, he said, had
to be led to analyze their place in history.

At this point, especially from about 1968-70,
Godard defined himself as a worker in films.

Only during the Langlois affair and at the
Cannes '68 festival did Godard take an activ¬
ist role in organizing political protests.

During May '68 and since then he defined his
political tasks almost exclusively as aesthetic
ones. As in LOIN DE VIETNAM, making films
politically meant for Godard and Gorin finding
the best combination of sounds and images for
"revolutionary" films. For four years Godard
took his separation from Establishment cinema
and its mode of production and distribution
seriously and did not return to big budget
filnitiaking until TOUT VA BIEN in 1972. How¬
ever, from 1968 on, for Godard "making films
politically" remained mainly formal concern. 13

In early June '68, Godard filmed UN FILM
COMME LES AUTRES. The sound track consisted of
an uninterrupted political conversation among
three Nanterre students and two workers from
the Renault-Flins paint. In the cinematography
of the discussion at Nanterre, Godard filmed
hands, legs, bodies in the grass or close ups .
of someone listening. It was often hard to
tell who was speaking or to understand the

Counter Cinema -

JUMP CUT

Alan Lovell's and Julia Lesage's articles on Godard in this issue
continue and extend JUMP CUT's discussion of Godard and radical counter-
cinema .

*Out of print, available from University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, MI.

No. 1 (May- June 1974)*

"MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT" by Julia Lesage

"WANDA and MARILYN TIMES FIVE: Seeing through Cinema-Verite" by
Chuck Kleinhans

No. 2 (July-August 1974)*

"LUCIA" by Peter Biskind

No. 3 (September-October 1974)

"Interview with Jean-Pierre Gorin" by Christian Braad Thomson.

No. 4 (November-December 1974)

"Political Formations in the Cinema of Jean-Marie Straub ^nd Daniele
Huillet" by Martin Walsh

"From Tear-Jerkers to Thought-Provokers: Types of Audience Response"
by Chuck Kleinhans
"WIND FROM THE EAST" by Julia Lesage
"Brecht Issue of Screen" reviewed by Julia Lesage.

No. 5 (January-February 1975)

"SPEAKING DIRECTLY: SOME AMERICAN NOTES" by Julia Lesage
"Afterimages — Notes from Practice" by John Jost
"WOMAN OF THE GANGES" by Barbara Halpern Martineau

"Critical Dialogue on WOMAN OF THE GANGES" by John Hess and William
Van Wert

No. 6 (March-April 1975)*

"Reading and Thinking about the Avant-garde" by Chuck Kleinhans

No. 7 (May- July 1975)* ,

"LE GAI SAVOIR" by James Monaco
"LE GAI SAVOIR" by Ruth Perlmutter

"Film as a Subversive Art (Amos Vogel)" reviewed by Chuck Kleinhans

No. 8 (August-September 1975)

"GREASER'S PALACE" by Chuck Kleinhans
"Women's Films at Knokke" by Verina Glaessner

No. 9 (October-December 1975)

"NUMERO DEUX" by Reynold Humphries

"Psychoanalysis and Film — An Exchartge" by Ben Brewster, Stephen Heath,
Colin MacCabe, and Chuck Kleinhans
"WOMEN'S HAPPY TIME COMMUNE" by E. Ann Kaplan

No. 10/11 (Summer 1976)

"MILESTONES" by Michelle Citron, Chuck Kleinhans, and Julia Lesage

"Critical Responses to MILESTONES" by Bill Horrigan

"Interview with Robert Kramer and John Douglas on MILESTONES" by G.

Roy Levin

"THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS" by Barbara Learning

"Cinema Novo and the Pitfalls of Cultural Nationalism" by Hans Proppe
and Susan Tarr

"Noel Burch's Film Theory" by Martin Walsh

"Burch and Brecht — Critical Dialogue" by Chuck Kleinhans

No. 12/13 (December 1976)

"MACUNAIMA" by J.R. Molotnick
"UNDERGROUND" by Thomas Waugh

Articles on New Film Theory by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Judith Mayne,
Julia Lesage, and E. Ann Kaplan •

"THE NIGHTCLEANERS" by Claire Johnston
"MOSES AND AARON" by Martin Walsh

"Interview with Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet" by Joel Rogers

No. 14 (March 1977)

"OCTOBER" by Murray Sperber _

A Bibliography from

No. 15 (July 1977)

"JONAH WHO WILL BE 25 IN THE YEAR 2,000" by Robert Stam, with response
by Linda Greene, John Hess, and Robin Lakes
"Brecht vs. Pabst in THE THREEPENNY OPERA" by Jan -Christopher Horak
"EFFI BRIEST" by Renny Harrigan

No. 16 (November 1977)

"FOX AND HIS FRIENDS — Gays in Film" by Bob Cant
"FOX AND HIS FRIENDS" by Andrew Britton
"JEANNE DIELMAN" by Jayne Loader

"Criticizing UNDERGROUND" by Peter Biskind (introduction) and by the
Weather Underground Revolutionary Committee and Bernadine Dohrn

No. 17 (April 1978)

"Brecht and the Politics of Self-Reflexive Cinema" by Dana Polan
No. 18 (August 1978)*

"ICI ET AILLEURS and SIX FOIS DEUX" by Guy Hennebelle (trans. Tiffany
Fleiss)

No. 19 (December 1978)*

"RAPE" by Julia Lesage

Special Section on Revolutionary Cuban Cinema:

"Overview" by Julianne Burton

"SIMPARELE" by Louise Diamond and Lynn Parker

"LUCIA" by John Mraz

"Interview with Humberto Solas" by Marta Alvear
"ONE WAY OR ANOTHER" by Carlos Galiano

NO. 20 (May 1979)

"Ways of Seeing (John Berger) " reviewed by Peter Steven
Revolutionary Cuban Cinema, Part II:

"Films of Manuel Octavio Gomez" by John Hess
"Interview with Manuel Octavio Gomez" by Julianne Burton
"ONE WAY OR ANOTHER" by Julia Lesage

"For an Imperfect Cinema" by Julio Garcia Espinosa (trans. Julianne
Burton)

"Imperfect Cinema, Brecht, and JUAN QUIN QUIN" by Anna Marie Taylor

No. 21 (November 1979)

"TENT OF MIRACLES" by Joan R. Dassin

No. 22 (May 1980)

Brazilian Cinema:

"Music in Glauber Rocha's Films" by Graham Bruce
"XICA DA SIL'/A" by Randal Johnson
"THE FALL" by Robert Stam
Cuban Cinema:

"DEATH OF A BUREAUCRAT" by B. Ruby Rich

No. 23 (November 1980)

"DAUGHTER RITE" by Jane Feuer

"Women's Space in Soviet Film" by Judith Mayne

No. 24/25 (March 1981)

Special Section on Lesbians and Film:

"The Films of Barbara Hammer" by Jacqueline Zita
"WOMEN I LOVE and DOUBLE STRENGTH" by Andrea Weiss
"The Films of Jan Oxenberg" by Michelle Citron
"CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING" by Julia Lesage

No. 26 (Decemljer 1981)

"EL SALVADOR: THE PEOPLE WILL WIN" by Michael Chanan
"THE TERROR AND THE TIME" by Bert Hogenkamp
"THE TERROR AND THE TIME" by John Hess

"Interview with Rupert Roopnaraine" by Monica Jardine and Andaiye
No. 27 (July 1982)

"German Feminist Filmmaking: Interviews with Helga Reidemeister ,

Jutta Bnlckner, and Christina Perincioli" by Marc Silberman
"SIX FOIS DEUX" by Jean Collet (trans. Dana Polan)

"Epic Theater and the Principles of Counter-Cinema" by Alan Lovell _

During the tumultuous days of Paris street
action, Godard along with other filnmakers made
unsigned three-minute cin^-tracts. The tracts'
anonymity served to abolish the famous-director
cult and to protect the maker. Manv cinl-
tracts showed shots of political grafitti or
the action on the barricades. Predictably God¬
ard's stood out aesthetically. Sometimes h&
just inscribed, a political pun such as LA REVO-
LUTION/L'ART EVOLUTION on a black frame. As
Godard described the procedure.

THE MAOIST GROUPS IN FRANCE

In the mid-60s Jean-Pierre Gorin belonged to
a political group, the UJCML {Union de Jeunesses
Communistes — Marxistes-lSninistes) . This was
one of the two principal Maoist or Marxist-
Leninist organizations in France before May-June
1968, when the government outlawed both. This
group and the PCHLF {Parti Communiste Marxiste-
leniniste de France) came about as part of or¬
ganizational splits from the French Communist

Sorbonne professor Louis Althusser had a stu¬
dent following within the PCF's youth group (the
UEC). In April 1966, that youth group published
a brochure attacking the French Communist Party
Central Committee's "Resolution" on culture and
ideology. The students protested that the Party
wanted to turn Marxism into a humanism, for the
PCF had spoken generally in the "Resolution" of
the "vaste mouvernent createur de 1 'esprit hu-
maine." To cite from the UEC brochure:

For Marxist-Leni (lists, there can only be a
politics of culture; they can't defend cul¬
ture abstractly. .. .Culture can be a speci¬
fic, direct form of the class struggle....
It [popular culture] isn't wedded to a
theme that's been decreed "popular"; as
Lenin said, the workers don't want litera¬
ture written for workers. .. .Cul ture takes
on a different meaning when the party has
not yet assumed power from v^hen it's al¬
ready leading the construction of social¬
ism.... There isn't a humankind, but rather
capital, a working class, a peasantry, and
intellectuals. Therefore, stop talking
about the past: talk about French intel¬
lectuals in the new conditions of our epoch
....Remember what Lenin said: spontaneous¬
ly, intellectuals take 4)n the dominant
ideology as their own. What is this ideol¬
ogy? Under the circumstances, monopolistic.
And so that state, which belongs to the
monopolies, is large, and there's place for
the intellectuals in its administration,
within the administrative counci Is. 16

political references. By refusing to show
faces talking, once again Godard contested a
television interview style which accustomed
viewers to hearing people speak but not to
consider the act of listening. Intercut among
that footage was news reel -type, black and white
footage of the Hay events themselves, which the
group was talking about in retrospect. On the
one hand, Godard strove to register the histor¬
ical forces of that moment; on the other, he
made an interminably long film, seemingly lack¬
ing in political analysis, and very much influ¬
enced by the spontanSisme of the rebel lion. 14

Take a photo and statement by Lenin or Che,
divide the sentence into ten parts, one
word per image, then add the photo that
corresponds to the meaning either with or
against it. 15

In collected form, the cine-tracts were to be
shown in July 1968, but by then the government
could effectively censor their public exhibition.

Party, especially among its student wing, over
the Stalin question and the Si no- Soviet split in
1962-3. Both groups rejected the PCF's over¬
throw of Stalin's "cult of the personality."

They defended much in Stalin's theoretical writ¬
ings and political practice. Both groups saw in
the Chinese Cultural Revolution a fundamental
way to fight western Communist Parties' failure
to commit themselves to revolution (revisionism)
and their concentration on purely economic gains
for the working class (economism).

I cite this document at length because it
foreshadowed Godard's decisions— to film out¬
side the "cultural monopolies" and to fight
certain forms of artistic representation in
ideological "preparation" for revolution. The
first official document of the UJ(;ml was pub¬
lished in the Cahiers Marxistes-leninistes in
early 1967. Jean-Pierre Gorin was probably on
the journal's staff then. 17 in the UJCML's
statement we can see prefigured the way Godard
consistently defined himself from 1968-72 as an
intellectual revolutionary, admittedly bourgeois
in origins and life style but tied to the work¬
ing class in their ideological and political
struggle toward socialism. The UJCML used as
its model the way the Red Guard student groups
took a leadership role in the Chinese Cotmiunist
Party, and the way that those groups strove to
apply Marxist theory to change society.

In its statement of principles, the UJCML did
not emphasize forming a far-Left party. Rather
it had these goals: (1) to struggle against

JUMP CUT NO. 28

TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER

bourgeois ideology, particularly in the forms of
pacifism, humanism, and spirituality; (2) to
create a "red" university which would serve ad¬
vanced workers and all revolutionary elements;

(3) to contribute to the anti-imperialist strug¬
gles already being waged by French youth and un¬
qualifiedly to support North Vietnam until vic¬
tory; and (4) to form revolutionary intellectu¬
als who would ally themselves with workers and
to create alternative organizations to that end.

This platform of the UJCML, I think, makes it
clear why in the late '60s Godard and Gorin
would often find themselves closer to the Ameri¬
can New Left than to other groups in France com¬
mitted to factory work and party building. More
than did the other Maoist group, the PCMLF, the
UJCML analyzed the university as "a repressive
apparatus in the hands of the bourgeoisie, an
apparatus that should be smashed and not im¬
proved. "18 And the UJCfIL asserted the impor¬
tance of encouraging political youth groups such
as black nationalists, women's liberation, or
national liberation fronts to develop autono¬
mously. In France, they argued, these groups
should not be coerced to submit to the central
direction of any new far-Left party. Godard and
Gorin's effort to make a film about the U.S. New
Left, VLADIMIR AND ROSA, illustrated a kind of
analysis drawn from the UJCML.

Godard and Gorin interpreted the principle of
"going to the masses" according to the model of
the Red Guard in the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
That is, Godard and Gorin felt they had to offer
political activists a theoretical discussion
about film's ideological dimensions, especially
political film's. Although Godard and Gorin
asserted that revolution did not come from the
ideological sphere and that the proletariat was
the revolutionary force, nevertheless, they felt
they could do their work outside the structure
of any political organization or party.

In the years immediately following the 1968
rebellion, Godard stated that he was working
collectively. He directed LE GAI SAVOIR, ONE
PLUS ONE, and BRITISH SOUNDS by himself, but in
1969 he worked loosely with other people, espe¬
cially in the formative stages of planning and
even shooting a film. He usually edited these
"collective" projects himself. In March 1969,
Godard went with Jean-Henri Roger and Paul Bur-
ron to Czechoslovakia where they clandestinely
filmed the images that Godard would use later in
PRAVDA. According to Gerard Leblanc in an arti¬
cle in VH 101 where Leblanc analyzed the politi¬
cal positions of the Dziga Vertov Group repre¬
sented in VENT D'EST, the "line" that dominated
PRAVDA was "spontanfeiste-dogmatique"; that is to
say;^ although the filmmakers constructed PRAVDA
around a critique of Communist Party revisionism,
they filmed images "spontaneously" as snatches
of reality, in what Godard would call a candid-
camera style and repudiate in aesthetic and
political terms. Jean-Pierre Gorin did not seem
to be part of the group at the time of the film¬
ing of PRAVDA.

In June 1969, Godard gathered together in
Italy the major participants from last year's
student-worker uprising, including the student
leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Godard had financed
this film on the grounds that these faraus stu-

LE GAI SAVOIR

dents would make an Italian western about the
1968 French events. (In fact, he gave about
half the money to radical student causes.)

This group followed an ultra-democratic proce¬
dure, debating everything,, so they filmed lit¬
tle. According to Gorin, at that point Godard
summoned him from Paris to Italy:ly "The two
Marxists really willing to do the film took
power," and they finished the film. 20 Gerard
Leblanc described the political struggle after
Gorin's arrival for control of VENT D'EST as
follows: The ex-militant of the UJCML (Gorin)
and the part of the group that took a concili¬
atory position (Godard?) defeated the "spontanl-
iste-dogmatique" line that had dominated PRAVDA
(Roger). And the ex-militant of UJCML had a
theoretical line which would, Leblanc said,
totally dominate the later making of LUTTES EN
ITALIE.21

According to Gorin, he edited VENT D'EST and,
following that, Godard edited PRAVDA. 22 Since
they structured both films by voice-over coninen-
taries added after the shooting, the two men had
complete control over the images' interpretation,
no matter what the original intent was when
these images were shot. Upon seeing both com¬
pleted films and noting their similarity, Godard
and Gorin realized that Godard's role as the
single creative "genius" (genius being a commod¬
ity that sells directors) had, as they wished,
really been broken down.

We realized taat even if people were look¬
ing at them as Jean-Luc's films, they were
not Jean-Luc's films. So we decided to
raise the Dziga-Vertov flag at that time,
and even to recuperate some of the things
Jean-Luc had made alone during the discus¬
sions we had— like SEE YOU AT THE MAO (US
release title for BRITISH SOUNDS) and PRAV¬
DA.... Working as a group for us had always
been the two of us working together. ... [It
is] a good means to cope with the tradi¬
tional ideology of group filmmaking, col¬
lective filmmaking— which was a real crap
hanging around after May '68 among the
moviemakers. Everybody was going to get
collective. ..and nothing came out of it.

And this was a good way to cope with it
because Jean-Luc had the idea of making a
collective film (VENT D'EST).... Even two
people working together dialectically is a
step forward.... The bad thing is that we've
never been able to extend ourselves. 23

It seems that Godard and Gorin periodically
revised their own political filmmaking history
for presentation to the public. In the December
1970 issue of Cinema 70^ an interview with God¬
ard bore the title, "Le Groupe Dziga Vertov.
Jean-Luc Godard parle au nonme de ses camarades
du groupe: Jean-Pierre Gorin, Gerard Martain,
Nathalie Billard, et Armand Marco." That list
significantly leaves out the names of Roger and
Burron, of PRAVDA, nor does it include that of
Anne Wiazemsky, whom Godard married in 1968 and
who appeared in many of his films from 1967-72
(Godard often put in her mouth his own radical
words to say). Armand Marco would act as God¬
ard's cameraperson from 1968 through TOUT VA
BIEN in 1972, yet in TOUT VA BIEN the film's
credits no longer claimed Marco as an equal in
Godard and Gorin's collective enterprise.

POLITICAL STRATEGIES IN THE POST-1968 FILMS

What did it mean for Godard and Gorin to' make
"political films politically"? Godard had reac¬
ted to May '68, which demanded a response from
French intellectuals, and he also reacted
against his own past role as an apolitical film¬
maker hailed as a creative genius. The Dziga
Vertov Group films quote Mao Tse Tung's command
to artists at the Yenan Forum in 1942: to
"struggle on two fronts," i.e., to present revo¬
lutionary political content and to perfect art¬
istic form. This dictum had a profound norma¬
tive influence not only on the Dziga Vertov
Group but also on many French Maoist writers and
cultural critics, such as those in Tel Quel,
Cindthique^ and Cahiers du cinema (briefly after
1972. )24

Yet the relation between "cultural revolu¬
tion" and the potential for socialist revolution
in an advanced capitalist country such as France
was not clear, liarx and Lenin did not tackle
the problem, nor did Mao, from whom the model
for cultural revolution originally came. Obvi¬
ously film in and of itself did not make revolu¬
tion, but new Marxist revolutionary theory had
to take into account mass media and their role
in cultural control.

For Godard, reacting against what he had
labeled in MADE IN U.S. A. the "sentimentality"
of the Left, following Mao meant to make films
with an expressly political content in a revolu¬
tionary form. In the content of these films
from 1967 on, Godard tried to articulate the
relations between contempoary history, ideology,
aesthetics, and mass media, and the potential
for revolution or its authenticity (in the case
of Russia and Czechoslovakia). Although Mao's
advice to artists concerned only artistic qual¬
ity and not Brechtian or modernist innovations
in form, for Godard and Gorin the struggle on
two fronts came to mean two things: (1) to
fight^the bourgeoisie and "its ally, revision-
ism"25 and (2) to critique political errors
within a new leftist cinematic form.

The political and aesthetic ideas Godard
raised in the political films from LE GAI
SAVOIR on delineate his theoretical concerns.

Yet those films often presented ideas as slogans
or in some other distanciated way. Godard never
handed the audience a completely worked out

JUMP CUT NO. 28

political theory or program of action. Audien¬
ces had to work with the concepts presented to
create their own political syntheses. In many
cases only by disagreeing with one or more of
the specific political points that Godard and
Gorin raised could the audience enact what the
makers had hoped their films would achieve. The
films' ideas were to be considered, erased, and
amended dialectically in comparison with the
audience's own political experience.

THE BRECHTIAN INFLUENCE ON THE
DZIGA VERTOV GROUP FILMS

In the late 60s and early 70s while on tour
in the U.S., Godard frequently indicated the
degree to which his post-68 films depended on
Brechtian principles.

A movie is not reality, it is only a re¬
flection. Bourgeois filirmakers focus on
the reflection of reality. We are con¬
cerned with the reality of that ref lec¬
tion. 26

Yet as Godard and Gorin collaborated on mak¬
ing political films, it was Gorin who strove to
bring out the films' explicitly Brechtian ele¬
ment. In a 1972 interview, Gorin indicated that
Godard had read mainly Brecht's poetry and writ¬
ings on the theater, in French. In particular,
they both had spent four years reading and dis¬
cussing Me-Ti. This was Brecht's uncompleted
book of aphorisms and personal and political
anecdotes written while in exile in Denmark and
Finland. When I met Godard briefly in April
1973, while on tour in the United States, both
he and Gorin reaffirmed this book's importance
for them. When I pressed to know why, Godard
replied that it showed the need for a cultural
revolution. He said that he had borrowed from
Brecht in the early 60s just as he had borrowed
many things in his films and that he had begun
to read Brecht's theories during his explicitly
political filnmaking period.

Both Godard and Gorin paradoxically admitted
that they had primarily an aeathetio interest in
Brecht, especiaTTy as they explored the politi¬
cal implications of cinematic form. In 1972
with TOUT VA BIEN, Godard and Gorin had drawn
away from their previous notion of distancia-
tion, which they had expressed in the 1969 Dziga
Vertov Group films with unemotional, albeit dry¬
ly witty, fi lima king. When I asked Gorin what
it meant for them to say they were making poli¬
tical films politically, he said that they meant
this in a Brechtian sense— in terms of film form.
Godard's television co-productions with Anne-
fiarie Mi ^i lie also reflected many of the same
"Brechtian" considerations which Godard had ex¬
plored intensively in the Dziga Vertov Group
years.

Since Bertolt Brecht's prose fiction Me-Ti
provided the basis for the sound track of both
PRAVDA and VLADIMIR AND ROSA, at this point I
shall detail how Godard used that text. In Me-
Tif Brecht presented short anecdotes, usually
one or two pages long, related by some character
with a Chinese name. Brecht drew the anecdotes'
content partly from the ancient writings of Mo
Tzu (translated as Me Ti in German) and also
from contemporary politics, Brecht's personal
life, and the Russian revolution. The entries
in Me-Ti were both didactic and witty. The
characters with Chinese names referred in code
to Marx, Lenin, Engels, Stalin, Plekhanov,
Luxemburg, Korsch, Trotsky, Hitler, Hegel,

Brecht, Feuchtwanger, Anatole France, and
Brecht's lover from the time he was in exile in
Denmark. According to Gorin, what Godard liked
about the book was the way characters with code
names discussed politics and history in parables
and short anecdotes.

In PRAVDA Godard and Gorin introduced the
characters Vladimir and Rosa (Lenin and Luxem¬
burg) who talked to each other in voice off,
giving didactic lessons in long speeches.

VLADIMIR AND ROSA applied the same concept in a
more rambling way. In PRAVDA Godard borrowed
content from Me-Ti directly. Furthermore, he
used the book's conceptual principle to struc¬
ture his film. To discuss potential relations
between Czech workers and farmers, Godard cited
an anecdote directly from Brecht's work about
how Lenin handled a problem between blacksmiths
making expensive steel plows (who symbolize the
industrial proletariat) and independent small-
scale farmers.

Godard also drew on Brecht's critique of Sta¬
lin in Me-Ti. The references to Stalin in Me-Ti ^
taken together, were complex and ambiguous. To¬
ward the beginning of the book, Brecht referred
favorably to Stalin's role in Russian history,
but he critiqued Stalin scathingly in later
pages. Brecht made no effort to reconcile the
opposing attitudes toward Stalin represented by
his different anecdotes. At one point in the
novel, Brecht had his fictional philosopher Me-
Ti attack Stalin in exactly the same way PRAVDA
attacked contemporary Czech socialism. In this
incident, Ite-Ti said:

"The farmers were fighting with the workers.
At first they were living under a democracy
but as the quarrel grew more intense, the
state apparatus disassociated itself en¬
tirely from the workforce and took on a
regressive form. Ni-en [Stalin] became,
for the farmers, a kind of emperor, whereas
in the eyes of the workers he remained an
administrator. But when a class struggle
developed among the workers, they too saw
in Ni-en an emperor."

Kin-je [Brecht] asked: "Could we call that

JUMP CUT NO. 28

Ni-en's fault?"

fte-Ti said: "That he made national labor
planning an economic rather than a politi¬
cal issue— that was an error. "27

While Godard and Gorin utilized Brecht's cri¬
tique of Stalinism, they, along with other
French ilaoists, would not deny Stalin's role in

building Russian communism. Neither did Brecht
in Me-Ti. In splitting from the French Commun¬
ist Party, French Maoists emphasized the signi¬
ficance of Stalin's writings and his political
practice in building Russia's dictatorship of
the proletariat. A section of PRAVDA was entit¬
led "La Dictature du Proletariat". This section
stressed the need for democracy anwng the prole¬
tariat, the model being the role of Red Guard
youth agitating in the universities and among
the people in China. As the sound track in
PRAVDA stated.

Without a large popular denrocracy, the dic¬
tatorship of the proletariat won't be able
to consolidate itself. In all domains, the
proletariat ought to exercise control over
the bourgeoisie. .. .Tightly maintain the
dictatorship of the proletariat and create
the conditions for the passage to connun-

ism.28

Godard and Gorin manipulated the same con¬
cerns dialectically in PRAVDA as Brecht did in
Me-Ti. Brecht and Godard and Gorin recognized
the need to build and teach political theory.
However, they insisted that intellectuals had to
go to the people to discover what needed to be
taught and that intellectuals needed new forms
for effectively expressing their ideas. Among
the people in Eastern Europe, workers had lost
the right of democratic participation in and
control over their own socialist governments;
regaining that control could only happen politi¬
cally (thus the appeal of the Chinese Cultural
Revolution to Godard and Gorin in PRAVDA). Me-
Ti was subtitled Btiah dev V/endungen (Book of
Citanges), and in the book Brecht offered not
only extensive discussions of dialectics itself
(Me-Ti called dialectical materialism Die Grosae
Met}iode\ in effect, dialectics are the Wendun-
gen.). One short section which illustrates the
title of Brecht's book could apply equally well
to Godard's PRAVDA:

"About Changes." Mien-1 eh [Lenin] taught
this: The institution of democracy can
lead to the institution of a dictatorship.
The institution of a dictatorship can lead
to democracy.

In addition to influencing the structure and
themes of PRAVDA and VLADIMIR AND ROSA, Me-Ti
also provided TOUT VA BIEN's basic theme— that
the individual must consider her/himself in his¬
torical terms. Fonda and Montand portrayed
characters who had to learn that their "personal"
situation also encompassed their work and their
particular historical position. At one time, as
news reporter Fonda tried to imagine fully the
striking workers' experience of oppression, the
image track showed her and Montand doing the
meat packers' demeaning jobs. The protagonists
saw themselves— in the third person, so to
speak— imagining themselves in someone else's
place. Similarly, Me-Ti had a section entitled,
"On Looking at Oneself Historically." In this
section, the philosopher He-Ti asked that indi¬
viduals

observe themselves historically, just like
social classes and large human groupings,
and so to comport themselves historically.
Life lived like matter for a biography
takes on a certain weight and can make his¬
tory.

In interviews Godard and Gorin stated speci¬
fically that they considered their goals and
techniques in making TOUT VA BIEN Brechtian.

In a long interview in Le idonde, Gorin stated
clearly the film's debt to Brechtian theory:

Q: Now, this film, with producers, with
stars, what are its politics?

A: It's a realist film, but it's neither
critical realism nor socialist realism (a
bourgeois value and a bourgeoisified value).
We've gone into a new type of realism,
closer to Brechtian theory.

First of all, it doesn't mask the real
conditions of its production. That's the
thesis of the first part of the film. It
describes from the onset its economic and
ideological reality, the weight given to
the fiction, its function, and its actors.
Because it's a question of constructing a
fiction that'll always permit its own an¬
alysis and that will lead the spectator
back into reality, the reality from which
the film itself has come. 29

POLITICAL ISSUES RAISED IN THE FILMS: 1967-1972

Earlier in 1968 with films such as LE GAI
SAVOIR, ONE PLUS ONE, and UN FILM COMME LES
AUTRES, Godard considered opening up and decon¬
structing narrative film form as his primary
political task. Under Godard's influence and
in keeping with the general literary and philo¬
sophical trend then in France represented by
Jacques Derrida, the nouveau romans the Theater
of the Absurd, and the Brecht revolution, left¬
ist film magazines heralded "deconstructed"
films, particularly the Dziga Vertov Group
films, for their discontinuity, which was now
seen to have a revolutionary political and ideo¬
logical significance.

However, in discussing the cineriatic struc¬

ture and politics of Godard's post-67 work, it
is all too easy to bandy about terms such as
"Brechtian," "deconstructed," or "modernist" in
an overgeneralized— and thus critically useless-
way. Because Godard and Gorin implanted speci¬
fic references in their films to political and
aesthetic theory, it is important to know what
concepts of ideology they were working with at
that time. The way they framed their discussion
of ideology relates specifically to their con¬
cerns with education, their attitude toward the
'68 civil rebellion, and to more general atti¬
tudes in France about the Chinese Cultural Revo¬
lution. The theoretical and aesthetic concepts
worked out in these films referred specifically
to Godard and Gorin's political milieu and must
be understood in those terms.

"SPONTANEISME"

Certain political positions taken in LE GAI
SAVOIR, made in 1967-68, significantly disappear
in the films made in 1969. In that film Godard
approved of New Left politics, offered a Marcu-
sian type analvsis of cultural repression, and
referred to Situationist Guy Debord's tract La
SocietS du apeotaale.^^ The Maoist group that
Gorin had belonged to politically disapproved of
spontaneous uprisings against repression. (Such
uprisings were sparked and led by otlier political
groups agitating in the universities in 1968.)

The 1969 Dziga Vertov Group films offered a
persistant critique of spontaneous demonstrations
and short-term political planning. Why there was
such an emphasis placed on these problems in late
60s France has to be understood in terms of left-
wing French politics as a whole. In 1945 after
WWII, during the Algerian crisis, and in the 1968
student-worker general strike, the radical Left
felt it had almost enough power to bring off a
socialist revolution. In each case, the subse¬
quent Left-critique was that both theory and
strategy had been insufficient, leaving the Left
fragmented and easily co-opted. With a long his¬
tory of socialism in France and a post-war his¬
tory of near-successes, the French Left could
conceivably think it possible to construct a
powerful radical organization which would aim at
seizing power. Since May '68 the far Left has
not been able to agree whether or not spontane¬
ous demonstrations and strikes effectively con -
test the trade union bureaucracy and the economic
status quo, or whether or not they help build a
revolutionary movement in France.

In the 1968 films, Godard and Gorin considered
apontan^isme as both a political and aesthetic
tactic, and they rejected it on both grounds.
Aesthetically Godard and Gorin expressed contempt
for a naturalistic or cinema verite style in
which the politics seemingly resided on the sur¬
face of events. Directors following such a style,
even though politically motivated, just filmed
what "happened." In contrast, just as one had to
build a revolutionary theory, so Godard and Gorin
wanted to build adequate images, usually very
simple ones, to "make political films political¬
ly."

It is important to raise this issue of apon-
taneiame in reference to Godard's political de¬
velopment, because his films from 1968 on offered
drastically different approaches to the subject.
Sometimes his '68-72 films celebrated acting out
of feeling and emotion and attending to the pre¬
sent moment. Other times those films rejected
feeling and emotion while embracing political
analysis. LE GAI SAVOIR, ONE PLUS ONE, UN FILM
COMME LES AUTRES and particularly BRITISH SOUNDS
and VLADIMIR AND ROSA had sections that celebrat¬
ed both feeling and spontaneous political action.
Yet spontaneous action was directly critiqued in
PRAVDA, VENT D'EST, and LUTTES EN ITALIE, and
implicitly critiqued in TOUT VA BIEN and LETTER
TO JANE. TOUT VA BIEN treated objectively, and
even sympathetically, the spontaneous militancy
among the workers of the (kcuahe Ppolitarierme (a
Maoist group) and the voluntaristic "guerrilla"
actions carried out by a group of students raid¬
ing a supermarket. The film presented these as
two of the major sources of struggle in France
since 1968. At this point Godard and Gorin did
not criticize apontanSiame as heavily as they did
in 1969, but they were basically asking French
intellectuals this question: "1968-1972: Where
are you now?"

REVISIONISM

In VENT D'EST Godard and Gorin went so far as
to call the French Communist Party (the PCF) "en¬
emies who pose as Marxists." The film explicitly
attacked the PCF, trade unionism in France, and
the Russian Conmunist Party for abandoning the
dictatorship of the proletariat and striving
merely for economic progress. In class terms.
Western European and American labor unions bene¬
fit from the economic position of their own
countries, from the exploitation of Third World
labor, and from the division of labor according
to sex. The collaborationist union cortmitteeman
in VENT D'EST represented Godard and Gorin's
scorn for what many in France saw as the unions'
betrayal of the working class in their failure
to make qualitative demands, so that workers
could integrate the personal aspects of their
life with their life on the job— thus the appeal
of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. And if the
workers' organizations were not helping the
workers, neither were the well-intentioned uni¬
versity students. In LUTTES EN ITALIE, Paola,
the bourgeoise student, did not know how to ap¬
proach the working class. First she talked to a
sales clerk while shopping. Later she tried to
act militantly by taking a job as a factory work¬
er without really understanding the processes of
social change.

Bertolt Brecht

In the critique of Russia in VENT D'EST, God¬
ard and Gorin said that Breshnev Studios-Mosfilm
had demanded the same’ film as Nixon-Paramount
for fifty years: The Western. This triple pun
about the Western referred to the backwardness
of Soviet social realism as a film style and al¬
so to the fact that Russia had refused to acknow¬
ledge any lessons from China, the East. In addi
tion, in PRAVDA, the voice-off stated that the
Russian government wanted its rubles to be worth
Eurodollars so that there were Czech workplaces
that had not seen the revolution, for people
were kept working in alienating jobs and func¬
tioning just like machines so as to build up
capital. Czech industry demonstrated the whole
problem of surplus value all over again. PRAVDA
showed a Czech worker manufacturing armaments,
as the voice-off noted that the guns would be
sold at a lower price than they were in Czecho¬
slovakia if they could bring in foreign curren¬
cy, and that even when they were sold to North
Vietnam, the Czech government did not care about
educating the workers to know about their soli¬
darity with an oppressed people. Finally, God¬
ard's critique of labor's position in Russia,
Czechoslovakia, the United States and France
tied in with his Brechtianism, with one of the
major themes in his films: How are subjective
factors related to social and economic condi¬
tions, to class and to revolutionary change?
Workers were still class beings, even if they
did not clearly see that, but they must take a
class stand.

THE EDUCATIONAL APPARATUS AND POLITICAL
EDUCATION OUTSIDE THAT APPARATUS

Central to Godard's own experience was the
'68 student revolt. Even as early as 1967, in
LA CHINOISE, he very clearly saw French univer¬
sity education as a class education, training a
managerial and technocratic elite. Since even
his earliest films had dealt with language, com¬
munication, false consciousness, and the mass
media, Godard easily turned to examine the edu¬
cational apparatus in its relation to the state.

In his cinematic portrayal of May '68, Godard
sympathetically identified with the students and
their slogans, written as grafitti all over
Paris, such as, "Let the workers have the Sor-
bonne." In most of his post-68 films, Godard
depicted what had become a common fact around
the world in the late sixties: police repres¬
sion and the whole of the state apparatus
brought in to crush student protests. Godard
admired the French student revolt, but he and
Gorin criticized the Czech students shown in
PRAVDA. As the Czech students demonstrated
against Russian tanks, they carried a black
flag of mourning and anarchy, not the red flag of
revolution; PRAVDA accused them of suicidal
humanitarianism.

Although Godard experienced the revolutionary
potential of the '68 protests in France and sup¬
ported the idea of a worker-student alliance, he
realized these issues' complexity. In films such
as LE GAI SAVOIR and VEtiT D'EST he portrayed the
'68 protests with symbolic images such as black
frames and confused voices, or he depicted the
student leaders on a scratched up visual track.
Yet in both those films the sound track de¬
scribed the '68 events as progressive. In gen¬
eral Godard and Gorin could draw no single con-

A Brechtian akit about Vietnam from lh
CHINOISE.

JUMP CUT NO. 28

elusion frcin the events. TOUT VA BIEN in 1972
could only conclude that the petite bourgeoisie
had to think historically and evaluate what they
had lost and what strengths they had gained
(mostly the former) since '68.

If TOUT VA BIEN had as its subject how petit
bourgeois intellectuals could come to terms with
May '68 and their lives' fragmentation, they
would have to do that by educating themselves
about history, outside any institutional struc¬
ture. Other of Godard and Gorin's post-68 films
dealt even more explicitly with this topic of
political education outside the university, usu¬
ally drawing on the texts of Mao Tse-Tung. As
in LA CHINOISE the protagonist in LUTTES EN
ITALIE discovered that her professor's voice
equalled the state's voice within the univer¬
sity. The professor would tell students which
ideas were true or false but he would not dis¬
cuss where those ideas came from, how social
practice generated those ideas, or how ideas had
a class nature. Yet the film also concluded
that it would represent a mechanistic and spon¬
taneous solution for the student to think she
could join the working class for the sake of
revolutionary agitation by quitting school and
going to work in a factory; politically she
should carry on her struggles where she was at,
at the university.

tradictions in their own situation, they can
then use that knowledge to change the world.

But, and here Godard and Gorin agreed totally
with Mao, practice comes first, for only prac¬
tice provides direct contact with the world.

The characters in LA CHINOISE, the voices in
PRAVDA, the young woman in LUTTES EN ITALIE,
even Fonda and Montand in TOUT VA BIEN were all
in some sense political activists. Godard
showed the steps by which Fonda in TOUT VA BIEN
came to realize what Mao stated in On Practice:
"If you want knowledge, you must take part in
the practice of changing reality. "31

In the form of all his films from 1968 on and
in the content of LE GAI SAVOIR, LUTTES EN
ITALIE, PRAVDA and TOUT VA BIEN, Godard seemed
to struggle for change in a way that paralleled
many French Maoist intellectuals' interpretation
of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. According
to Mao,

The struggle of the proletariat and the
revolutionary people to change the world
comprises the fulfillment of the following
tasks: to change the objective world and,
at the same time, their own subjective
world--to change their cognitive ability
and change the relations between the sub¬
jective and objective world. 32

PRAVDA examined false consciousness in Czecho¬
slovakia; if the state's goal was to raise the
working class to the level of bourgeois intel¬
lectual life, then workers would never challenge
bourgeois values of individuality and egoism.

In VENT D'EST the revisionist school teacher
gave the Third World student Louis Althusser's
Lire Capital (How to Read Capital) instead of
guns. LE GAI SAVOIR, VENT D'EST and LUTTES EN
ITALIE dealt totally with radical political
education, which theme then represented films'
own didactic function. In LE GAI SAVOIR the
protagonists wanted to find a way of educating
themselves, especially about the media. They
proposed to combine two strategies, method and
sentiment. Their plan reflected Godard's inter¬
est in many New Left issues, such as the rela¬
tion between emotional repression (Herbert Mar¬
cuse's one-dimensionality) and advanced capital¬
ist modes of social organization. In this film
Godard had the characters announce what he him¬
self would do over the next four years: dis¬
solve the sounds and images that compose a film
and go back to zero in terms of film form, so
as to find reference points that would lead to
understanding the rules for making a "revolu¬
tionary" film.

In these political films Godard and Gorin
wanted to change our cognitive ability, and they
showed us characters struggling to change theirs
The two directors wanted to change the relations
between the subjective and the objective world,
especially in terms of the way we received film
and the media.

IDEOLOGY

As in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Godard
and Gorin struggled against bourgeois and revi¬
sionist modes of thought. PRAVDA unmasked the
attitudes the state ideological apparatus main¬
tained in the workers. The established Left's
cultural policies frequently became Godard and
Gorin's target. They heavily critiqued films
made in Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Third
World. In VENT D'EST the voice-off said that
an alternative cinema had to get into the revo¬
lutionary present and not be cluttered with past
images and sounds. Imperialism could too easily
creep back in via the camera and work against
the revolution.

PRAVDA contained on the sound track many
references to Mao's writings, especially the
essay On Practice. As Godard said, PRAVDA
really depicted a communist "irreality" in
Czechoslovakia, for what looked like information
created a deformation. The film demonstrated
the ways Western ideology had swamped Czech
popular democracy and how, worst of all, the
workers had no control over production or the
state. They functioned like machines and were
denied entry into the political sphere. PRAV-
DA's critique, of course, gave one more French
Maoist critique of Communist revisionism, where
all Western Communist parties were seen as hav¬
ing adopted Western (ultimately, U.S.) ideology.

VENT D'EST and LUTTES EN ITALIE dealt with
the whole Maoist concept of growing through
political practice and criticizing one's own
practice so as to effectively change society.
Marxism emphasizes the importance of theory as
a guide to action, for theory helps people pro¬
duce knowledge about their own situation; once
people see through to the laws of the objective
world and understand the play of objective con¬

Like Brecht, Godard fought too-easily-diges¬
ted or predigested modes of thought. Brecht
and Godard found such modes of thought in phi¬
losophy which discussed "self-evident truths,"
or in narrative form which depended on a fixed
view of character and elicited a predfctable
emotional effect. In literature and film, this
kind of narrative omitted explaining the social
and class context from which the characters' or
authors' ideas emerged, and within which the
play and film would be received.

In TOUT VA BIEN, LUTTES EN ITALIE, and LE GAI
SAVOIR, Godard and Gorin examined how ideology
organized practical social behavior (ideology
here referring to the daily uninterrupted repro¬
duction of productive relations in the psyche). 33
With Mao's concept of the uneven development of
contradictions, Godard and other Maoists had a
theoretical vehicle with which to appreciate
women's liberation and Third World nationalist
movements as progressive on their own terms. In
his earlier films Godard had considered the rela¬
tion between women's economic and social oppres¬
sion and 'women's subjective oppression; in WEEK¬
END he took up this same theme for Blacks and

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Arabs. Both women's movement writers and anti-
colonial writers such as Frantz Fanon have dis¬
cussed the psychological "imperialism" absorbed
by oppressed peoples, i.e., the concept of the
colonized mind. Godard and Gorin accepted this
evaluation of oppressed people's subjective be¬
havior as well as other critiques by the New
Left of the political implications of daily
life. In all their films from 1968 on they
sought to analyze the political consequences of
seemingly "natural" perceptions and of one's un¬
examined daily conduct.

In 1969 Godard and Gorin structured a whole
film around examining ideology in everyday life.
They drew on the ideas of Louis Althusser as
they presented as a protagonist in LUTTES EN
ITALIE a young woman activist who wanted to
understand the structural conditions of her
life. She first defined ideology as the neces¬
sarily imaginary relation between herself and
the real conditions of her existence. The film
introduced the various areas of her life— milit¬
ant activity selling a radical newspaper, family
life, an afternoon with a lover, shopping, going
to class— in flat emblematic images. The pro¬
tagonist could evaluate these instances of her
life only as isolated phenomena. Visually those
instances were joined together by black sections
in the film. Slowly the woman, Paola, began to
understand that ideology functions by such re¬
gions, which seem more or less autonomous but
are connected. As the voice-over said, her life
was cut up into rubrics. In learning to connect
these areas of her life, she learned that ideol¬
ogy always expressed itself through a material
ideological apparatus which organized its mater¬
ial practices according to a practical ritual
(going to school, falling in love, going shop¬
ping, watching television, etc.).

Godard and Gorin had the protagonist learn
how her beahvior in each area of her life served
existing production relations, now represented
visually by shots of factory work which replaced
the black spaces. She understood the underlying
governing social phenomena that bourgeois ideol¬
ogy hides. She concluded that as a militant she
would attack the determining region of bourgeois
ideology, the legal and political sphere, and
understood that such activity would have reper¬
cussions in different ways in all other areas of
her life.

LUTTES EN ITALIE presented an oversimplified
view of Althusserian concepts of ideology. It
certainly could be challenged as a political
statement. However, there could be no response
to the film at all except on political terms.

The visual organization of the film derived from
Godard and Gorin's effort to find cinematic
equivalents for coming to understand one's posi¬
tion in ideology. The content was about ideol¬
ogy and nothing else. The film not only in¬
vited but demanded a political evaluation.

In a long article on the film Gerard Leblanc
criticized the film for not analyzing the objec¬
tive contradictions of a young militant's life
in either France or Italy, although ostensibly
Paola belonged to the group Lotta Conti nua. 34
The contradictions presented in the film did not
reflect the complexity or historical context of
real social conditions in Italy and France in
the late 1960s. In addition, the film did not
analyze ideology as a force for material trans¬
formation but only as an object of knowledge.

The film depicted ideological apparatuses as a
system of imaginary representations. Since the
film showed Paola proceeding to transform her¬
self subjectively by rethinking her daily life
and political practice, it implied that under¬
standing ideological mechanisms and transforming
one's daily life from a bourgeois to a revolu-

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JUMP CUT NO. 28

tionary one was a task one could achieve by one¬
self rather than by collective activity within a
political organization. In political terms the
film allowed for the subjective- transformation
of a bourgeoise militant but gave no indication
how France and Italy in 1969 might be trans¬
formed .

CINEMA AND IDEOLOGY

In their last joint work together, Godard and
Gorin made LETTER TO JANE to contribute to an
understanding of the cinema and ideology. In
an Althusserian sense, they treated film here as
an ideological process embedded in a specific
ideological apparatus which governs the rituals
that define cinematic practice, ihe film was
made out of a few slides and Godard and Gorin's
voice-over commentary analyzing these slides.
Godard and Gorin discussed journalism, the star
system, and the dependence of Third World coun¬
tries such as North Vietnam on our press and our
radical stars--in this case on Jane Fonda. They
talked about the rituals and codes of a certain
kind of cinematic expression of helpless dismay
while facing immense social suffering. They
discussed the implications of photojournal istic
form. They used the topic of Fonda's militant
practice as a round-about way of rephrasing the
question, "What is the role of the intellectual
in the revolution?"--the statement of which
question they found inadequate because of the
way that the mass media diffuse, control, and
deform information.

Primarily in LETTER TO JANE they demonstrated
the function of bourgeois photojournalism by
analyzing in detail a photo of Jane Fonda taken
in North Vietnam. It had appeared in L' Express
with the caption, "Jane Fonda interrogant des
inhabitants de Hanoi sur les bombardements
americains" (Jane Fonda questioning Hanoi resi¬
dents about U.S. bombings). The film's comment¬
ary stated that the examination of this news-
photo was a scientific experiment, first to see
its form and then to see the photo as a "social
nerve cell." In this film, as in PRAVDA, the
sound track cited the three kinds of social
practice that Mao said could generate correct
ideas— the struggle for production, the class
struggle, and scientific experimentation. 37

In discussing the photo as a "social nerve
cell," Godard and Gorin noted that the caption was
written by L'Express writers untruthfully (Fonda
was listening and not questioning) without any
contact with the North Vietnamese, who probably
controlled the process of producing the photo
but who did not control its distribution (and
thus were limited in completing the act of com¬
munication they planned). Fonda was photo¬
graphed by journalist Joseph Kraft in her role
as a star, as a certain kihd of ideological mer¬
chandise. Godard and Gorin said that if
L'Express was able to lie in the photo's cap¬
tion, it was because the picture made that pos¬
sible: "L'Express is able to avoid saying,

'What peace? '--leaving this up to the picture
alone. "38

WIND FROM THE EAST

Luc Godard: Pour mieux Icouter les autres," Le
Monde, April 27, 1972, p. 17.

7. Godard, interview with Sylvain Regard,

"La Vie moderne," Le Nouvel Observateur, 100
(Oct. 12-18, 1966), 54. Translation mine.

8. Godard, LA CHINOISE (screenplay), L’Avant
Scene du aindma. No. 114 (May 1971), p. 20.
Translation mine.

sider, at least publicly, how they had just
"used" her in TOUT VA BIEN. For example, during
the filming of that film, it was known that the
politically Left actors Fonda and Montand wanted
to have but were given very little collective
input into the style and content of the film.
Godard and Gorin did not examine their own role
in the constellation of ideological contradic¬
tions that made up the "moment" of either TOUT
VA BIEN or LETTER TO JANE.

I raise this issue of Godard and Gorin's own
stance because they had a relation to their own
practice that was far more ambiguous and unarti¬
culated than that analysis of Fonda's practice
which they attempted to make within LETTER TO
JANE. They "made political films politically"
after 1968, striving for a correct and revolu¬
tionary film form. They considered French mili¬
tants their intended audience. However, by the
time they made LETTER TO JANE to take on tour,
they knew they could make more money with that
filmed slideshow with foreign university stu¬
dents, particularly U.S. ones, than in France.
TOUT VA BIEN was made, as was discussed in the
opening shots of the film itself, with big
studio money and stars (a precondition for
getting the money). Yet when Godard and Gorin
summarized the functioning of the cinematic
ideological apparatus, they could not discuss
the contradictions in their own practice nor
analyze their own relation to production and
consumption. They too received money as "stars."
They could choose whether to film in 16ttin, wide
screen Cinemascope, or a slideshow format. They
did not discuss the contradictions involved in
each of these decisions. In LETTER TO JANE they
also did not discuss the commercial failure of
TOUT VA BIEN nor the political effect of its
being seen primarily in 16mm distribution chan¬
nels in the United States and England. And al¬
though they criticized Fonda for a kind of
schizophrenia in that she could make a Hollywood
film like KLUTE and also agitate on behalf of
North Vietnam, they themselves did not consider
the political implications of the fact that
American, French, British, and Italian univer¬
sity students and film intellectuals have been
primary receivers of their most political films.
In his film and television work since 1972,
Godard has demonstrated that such ambiguity has
continued to permeate his work--the Brechtian
strain being seen in NUMERO DEUX and his tele¬
vision work, and the politically weak attempt at
commercial success evidenced in SAUVE QUI PEUT
LA VIE.

9. Ibid., p. 20. Mao Tse-Tung, "On Contra¬
diction," Selected Readings from the Work of
Mao Tse-Tung. (Peking: Foreign Language Press,
1971), pp. 85-133. Brecht shared Godard's en¬
thusiasm for this theoretical text. In 1955
Brecht wrote that it was the book that had made
the strongest impression on him the year before.

10. Godard, interview with Michael Cournot
"Quelques ^vi dentes incertitudes," Revue d'es-
th^tique, N.S. 20, No. 2-3 (Winter '67), 122.

11. Jean-Luc Godard, Alexandre Astruc, Jean
Renoir, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, "Con¬
ference de presse (Feb. 16, 1968): L 'Affaire
Langlois," Cahiers du cin^a. No. 199 (March
1968), pp. 34-41.

12. An excellent review of French theoreti¬
cal writings coming out of May '68 is Jane Eli¬
sabeth Decker's "A Study in Revolutionary Theory
The French Student-Worker Revolt of May, 1968,"
Ph.D. Dissertation, Washington University, 1971.

The directors concluded that Fonda was being
used in the photo solely as a star. She stood
in the foreground with a look on her face which
conveyed a tragic sense of pity, and the Viet¬
namese were seen only out of focus or with back
turned. Godard and Gorin criticized her tragic
look in the way that Althusser critiqued the
mirror-like specular aspect of ideology, which
positioned people in seemingly natural and in¬
evitable social roles. Such a photograph, ac¬
cording to the film's sound track.

13. Gorin, interview with Lesage, Paris,
July 18, 1972; and Godard and Gorin, interview
with Kent Carroll, Focus on Godard, ed. Royal
Brown (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1972).

14. For a further discussion of the composi¬
tion of the student groupuscules and the poli¬
tics of spontaneity, see Decker, pp. 182-209,
234-37. See also Robert Estivals, "De 1 'avant-
garde esthetttiue ci la revolution de mai," Com¬
munications, No. 12 (1968), pp. 84-107. In all
of the student groups, even though a primacy was
placed on direct action and fighting on the bar¬
ricades, there was also a consensus that the
working class must make the revolution. The
general strike was possible because working
class militancy was at a high level--and has
continued so, with a history of wildcat strikes
since 1968. Gorin had rejected the Maoist
groups per se by May 1968, and his description
to me of the history of the Maoist groups indi¬
cates some of the complexities surrounding spon-
taneisme as a political issue in the Left in
France:

imposes silence as it speaks. . .says nothing
more than how much it knows, .. .Film equals
the editing of "I see."... This expression
says I think therefore I am. This expres¬
sion that says it knows a lot about things,
that says no more and no less, is ah expres¬
sion that doesn't help one to see more
clearly into one's personal problems; to
see how Vietnam can shed some light on them,
for example. . .39

The voice-off also asserted elliptically at
this point that such an expression illustrated
a look that came into sound film with the New
Deal, but the economic connections to film form
here were not made explicit.

One of Godard and Gorin's serious conceptual
shortcomings in LETTER TO JANE was that they did
not analyze the relation between the contradic¬
tions they pointed out in Fonda's role as a
militant and the contradictory or mutually rein¬
forcing ways the media have been used by differ¬
ent political groups and economic interests.
North Vietnam, Hollywood, L’Express, and Godard
and Gorin in both TOUT VA BIEN and LETTER TO
JANE all had different reasons for using Fonda
as a star. They all used her and her image in
the context of different political and economic
situations. Her image was world-known and dif¬
fused by a technical apparatus that extended
throughout the world, but it had been used in
very different ways, from the sex-star of BAR-
BARELLA to information rallies about political
prisoners in South Vietnam. Fonda played on
contradictions, as they did. In this case, she
did so to raise political support. Godard and
Gorin criticized Fonda because she did not evalu¬
ate or act out of the contradictions in her own
practice and situation asan actress. They
wanted her to question how she might become a
militant Hollywood actress, creating a new poli¬
ticized approach or style. They principally
raised an aesthetic demand. They did not con-

1. I have written extensively on the unique
cinematic tactics Godard developed in this per¬
iod. See my "Critical Survey of Godard's
Oeuvre" as well as descriptions of individual
films in Jean-Luc Godard: A Guide to Referenaei
and Resources (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1979); "TOUT
VA BIEN and COUP POUR COUP: Radical French Film
in Context," Cindaste, 5, No. 3 (Summer, 1972);
"Godard and Gorin's WIND FROM THE EAST: Looking
at a Film Politically," JUMP CUT, No. 4 (Nov.-
Dec., 1974); "The Films of Jean-Luc Godard and
Their Use of Brechtian Dramatic Theory," Ph.D.
Dissertation, Indiana University, 1976.

2. Interview with Godard, conducted by my¬
self, Champaign, Illinois, April 4, 1973.

Most of the Maoist movement was unable to
see what was happening in '68. They were
active in '68 in the factories and refused
to deal with the student movement as petit
bourgeois. And in the factories, they
tried not to appear as leftist but as "re¬
sponsible people," which led them to fake
much of the revisionist slogans and try to
adapt them in a Maoist way (such as "keep¬
ing the workers inside the factories,"
etc.). It was a reactionary way to see the
events, and they were a reactionary force.

I mean, the Maoist movement refused to
fight on the barricades even if individual¬
ly most of the [or their, tape unclear]
people had done it. In 1968, the movement
struck back in spontaneism and ultra-left-
ism. It was also effective in a certain
way that it left a real fighting spirit
inside some of the elements of the working
class. Most of the leftist movement re¬
tired to get organized in a semi -legal way.
For three years, the Maoists' actions have
been very spontaneistic and very scattered.
People come into a factory just like that
where there's a coup, just getting up and

3. Annie Goldman, "Jean-Luc Godard: Un
Nouveau Realisme," N.R.F., 14, No. 165 (Sept. 1
1966), 564.

4. Godard, interview with Pierre Daix, "Jean
Luc Godard: Ce que j'ai a dire," Les Lettres
franqaises. No. -128 (April 21-27, 1966), p. 17.

6. Godard, interview with Yvonne Baby

trying to organize, and exposing people to
repression, and so on. It's been a real
mess. (July 1972)

15. Godard, interview, Kino-Praxis (1968).
This was a film broadside published in Berkeley
by Jack Flash, pseud, for Bertrand Augst.

16. Patrick Kessel , Le Mouvement "Maoiste"
en France 1: Textes et documents, 1963-1968
(Paris: Oct. 18, 1972). See pp. 27-67 for a
chronology of events from 1952 to 1964, includ¬
ing the Si no-Soviet split in 1962-3, that led to
the splits from the PCF. Brochure cited, pp.
151-52. Translation mine.

17. Godard said that he had interviewed some
of the staff of Cahiers marxistes-leninistes in
preparation for LA CHINOISE.

18. Kessel, p. 208. Translation mine.

19. Gorin, interview with Lesage, July 18,
1972.

20. Gorin, interview with Martin Walsh, Take
One, 5, No. 1 (Feb. 1976), 17.

21. Gerard Leblanc, "Sur trois films du
Groupe Dizga Vertov," VH 101, No. 6 (1972),

p. 26.

22. Tom Luddy indicated that Godard edited
both films (May 14, 1975, phone conversation
with Lesage). Luddy also said Raphael Soren and

Ned Burgess were unofficially part of the Dziga
Vertov Group then, and that the group's function
was primarily to make suggestions for scripts.

23. Gorin interview, July 18, 1972.

24. Mao Tse-Tung, "Talks at the Yenan Forum
on Literature and Art," Selected Readings, p.
276.

25. WIND FROM THE EAST and WEEKEND, Nicholas
Fry, ed., Marianne Sinclair and Danielle Adkin-
son, trans. (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1972), p. 125.

26. Godard, interview with Kent E. Carroll,
Evergreen Review, 14, No. 83 (Oct. 1970).

27. French edition available to Godard was
Bertolt Brecht, Me-Ti: Livre des retoumements ,
ed. Owe Johnson, tr. Bernard Lotholary (Paris:

L 'Arche, 1968). Translated from the German,
Brecht, Gesarmelte Werke, XII, introduction
Klaus Volker, series ed. Elisabeth Hauptmann
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967). Transla¬
tions are mine.

28. PRAVDA,^text of voice-over commentary,
Cahiers du cinema. No. 240 (July-Aug. 1972).

29. Gorin interview with Martin Evan, Le
Monde, April 27, 1972, p. 17.

30. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man
(Boston: Beacon, 1964). Guy Debord, La Societe

JUMP CUT NO. 28

du Spectacle (Paris: Buchet-Castel , 1967), tr.
and rpt. in Radical America (entire issue), 5,

No. 5 (1970).

3T. Mao Tse-Tung, "On Practice," Selected
Readings, p. 41.

32. Ibid.

33. Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideologi¬
cal State Apparatuses (Notes toward an Investi¬
gation)," Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays,
tr. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review
Press, 1971), pp. 127-186. Louis Althusser's
"I.S.A." essay is dated Jan. -April 1969, but did
not appear until 1970 in La Pensee. Gorin, who
structured LUTTES EN ITALIE, came to know these
concepts through Althusser's lectures. The film
follows Althusser's ideas almost exactly and was
made in 1969.

34. Gerard Leblanc, "Lutte idwlogique en
LUHES EN ITALIE," VH 101, No. 9 (Autumn 1972),

p. 86.

37. Mao Tse-Tung, "Where Do Correct Ideas
Come From?" Selected Readings, p. 502.

38. Godard and Gorin, "Excerpts from the
Transcript of Godard and Gorin's LETTER TO JANE,"
Women and Film, 1, Nos. 3-4 (1973), 51.

39. Ibid., p. 49. h

CRITICAL DIALOGUE

Sexual politics

--Cathy Schwichtenberg

After reading Maureen Turim's book review of
Patricia Erens's feminist film anthology sexual
Strategems {.JUMP CUT, No. 27), I was prompted to
reflect on issues related to pedagogy and femin¬
ist film studies. Crucially, what is at stake
in feminist film studies is the politicization
of one's students. At the level of praxis, the
teacher must convince her students that they
have a stake in feminism and that movies are not
simply entertainment but cultural/ideological
artifacts in which representations inform the
ways that the students go about constructing
their social reality.

Many students may be skeptical or resistant to
even the most basic assumptions that feminism
and the way in which women are represented in
film significantly affect them outside of acade¬
mia. Other students may already be convinced of
the relevance of feminist studies to their lives
and thus wish to understand how ideology, spe¬
cifically in relation to film, informs the tex¬
tual mechanisms that determine certain represen¬
tations of women. Still other students may al¬
ready know these things and simply net'd a his¬
torical background to situate the evolution of
feminist film studies or need to be referred to
articles that exhibit diverse methodologies
brought to bear on texts under the rubric of
feminism. Finally, some students who have been
marginally interested in either feminist studies
or film or both may desire a sense of community
with others who share their interests. These
students probably look upon the classroom situa¬
tion as a pretext to develop friendships.

Thus a course in feminist film studies, espe¬
cially an introductory level course, riftist some¬
how satisfy a number of diverse needs and curi¬
osities that the students bring to the course.
With such widespread desires and expectations,
the teacher's task is certainly not an easy one
—is she to satisfy desires one or two or all of
the above? Clearly, she would want to satisfy
the needs of all of her students. This brings
us to the sticky problem of "how." As Turim
rightly points out, there are too few feminism
and film anthologies, and those that are avail¬
able require annotation as a result of the obvi¬
ous time lags in publication and hence the
"datedness" of the material.

But, I don't believe, as I think Turim does,
that teachers of feminism and film are confront¬
ed with an either/or proposition. The choice
between an anthology which presents a diverse
Ulbeit scattered) historical overview or more
methodologically rigorous theoretical articles
does not exist. Obviously both types of femin¬
ist scholarship should be studied, analyzed, and
critiqued by students— maybe chronologically so
that students have a sense of evolving and de¬
veloping lines of thought around a central issue
or even two opposing views on an issue. It is
not enough to indicate that the earlier popular
notion of "images of women" has shifted to the
very different process notion of "imaging," but
rather why, how, when, and what is at stake as
the result of such a shift (what is lost and
what gained). Other large issues may involve
the differences between feminism and Continental
feminism or the political/critical/theoretic U.S.
implications of a cross-fertilization of the
two currents.

While feminist anthologies certainly have
their shortcomings, the more theoretical works
that Turim points to are equally limited. They
too are bound by history and are not definitive;
probably a few years from now those works will

also require annotation. Any "model" piece of
scholarly writing presented to students should
be used as an example, critiqued by students,
and the methodology perhaps imitated a..d used as
a springboard for the students' own formula¬
tions.

Certainly, there is no one right way to ap¬
proach teaching feminism and film— luckily, the
work in this area has yet to be canonized, as
has the work in the majority of courses taught
in the academy. Significantly, this means that
feminism and film is an area still open to meth¬
odological and political debate. One of the
places for political intervention triggered by
debate lies within the academy, which provides a
time and place where issues that seriously af¬
fect how people perceive the word can be aired,
argued, and discussed. This space for, political
intervention must be left open to provide stu¬
dents with the opportunity to develop their own
unique formulations on issues and to refute and
challenge previous scholarship in the field.

Feminist film studies is a unique area in that
it not only relates to students' lived experi¬
ences but it also provides them with a space for
original thought that is all too often stifled
in the more canonized disciplines which remain
entrenched in tradition. This space which fem¬
inism and film provide should be left open for
debate, challenges, new methodologies. We will
always be engaged in the process of annotating
and amending articles or anthologies, and with
any luck our students will help us do it. ■

Tap dancing

NO MAPS ON MY TAPS. Chuck Green, Bunny Briggs,
Sandman Sims, and Lionel Hampton

—John Fell

Marcia Biederman's appreciation of NO MAPS ON
MY TAPS (George Nierenberg, 1978) in jump cut.
No. 26, is very welcome, and perhaps a few addi¬
tions may be useful tc readers. While often
commercially deployed (battles of the bands at
the Savoy Ballroom), the notion of challenge

rests deep in traditions of jazz and jazz dance:
artistic combat quite for its own sake but
equally a way to learn and to test progress
against the best. Young tenor saxes used to
meet the great Coleman Hawkins on his home
ground (New York) or wherever he toured with the
Fletcher Henderson band. Sandman Sims touches
on the matter when he speaks of Chuck Green, "He
was my biggest challenge. I could always mea¬
sure my dancing by his dancing." Later, "To
challenge dance was to learn how to dance."

Many great tap dancers were/ are singers, too,
John Bubbles, Bill Robinson, and Bunny Briggs
among them. Singing was part of the stage turn,
and performers carried arrangements of their
specialty numbers from job to job. Briggs ap¬
peared both as singer and dancer with Charlie
Barnet's band, and he can be seen in one of the
Universal band shorts of the late forties,
dressed, significantly, as a Western Union mes¬
senger. Bill Robinson's Broadway career was
enhanced in BLACKBIRDS OF 1928 with "Doin' the
New Lowdown," the Dorothy Fields- Jimmy McHugh
song which introduces Lionel Hampton's band in
NO MAPS ON MY TAPS.

In the film, each accompaniment enlists gener¬
ations of stage and jazz overtones, from "Sweet
Georgia Brown," written by the vastly underrated
black composer Maceo Pinkard, to Juan Tizol's
"Caravan" and Billy Strayhorn's "Take the A
Train" at Small's Paradise, itself once an out¬
post for black entertainers, run by whites for a
white clientele, like the Cotton Club.

While the respective merits of Bill Robinson
and John Bubbles are yet argued, they also re¬
flect stylistic changes: Robinson high on his
toes. Bubbles new with heavy-on-the-heel steps.
Buck Washington and Bubbles, by the way, were
also immensely popular. They (or Bubbles alone)
played the Palace, the Orpheum circut, Loew's,
the Music Hall, London's Palladium, the Zieg-
field Follies, and George White's Scandals.

NO MAPS ON MY TAPS doesn't pretend to be a
history of the art, but conspicuous by their
absence even in reference are figures like Honi
Coles and the Nicholas Brothers. Jazz and jazz
dance are really closely integrated, and Coles,
himself now seventy, argues that innovations in
Jazz percussion, the bass drum bombs of bop
drumming, for instance, started with dancers
long before Parker's, Gillespie's, and Monk's
experimentations.

Certainly Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly capital¬
ized on black traditions of jazz dance, but how
far they literally drew on black dancers' mate¬
rial is open to dispute. Even "Bojangles of
Harlem," Astaire's tribute to Robinson in SWING¬
TIME (George Stevens, 1936) is noteworthy for
its absence of Robinson routines. In tribute,
black dancers are much more disposed to slip in
and out of a Bojangles swagger like the inturned
hand-on-the-hip that's documented in Nieren-
berg's film by a little clip from sorray for
Love (Walter Lang, 1936).

Readers may be interested in another film,
TAPDANCIN' (1980), produced and directed by
Christian Blackwood. It features John Bubbles,
Honi Coles, and the Nicholas Brothers. Coles
notes he might have gone further but for racism
and turns to the camera to say, "I might not
have even been a dancer if I'd been white." For
one who loves jazz music and dance, the remark
poses a moment of terrible reflection. I like
to think that Chuck Green's song-snippet
"There's no maps on my taps ..." somehow de¬
scribes a man so skilled that artificial bound¬
aries can't limit him. But of course Green's
years in a mental institution belie that little
fantasy. ■

LOOKING FOR WHAT
ISN’T THERE

--Martha Fleming

The Celluloid dloset : Bomosexuality in the
Movies. Vito Russo. New York: Harper
and Row, 1981. 276 pp. , illustrated. In¬

dex.

Some sixty-odd pages into his book, Vito Russo
comments on Leontine Sagan's classic MADCHEN IN
UNIFORM. Here, my growing frustration with his
book crystallized into an understanding of what
was wrong with it. MADCHEN, made in pre-war
Weimar Germany, concerns the tortured relation
between a student and her female teacher at a
private school for the daughters of Prussian
army officers. Of it, Russo says:

One of the few films to have an inherently
gay sensibility [Russo has trouble using
the word "lesbian," even in places where
anything else is simply wrong], it is also
one of the few to be written, produced,
and directed by women. Thus the film
shows an understanding — missing from most
films that touch on lesbian feelings— of
the dynamic of women relating to women on
their own terms (p. 56).

Is a film inherently lesbian because lesbians
mak« 1t? More generally, can women in our soci¬
ety relate to women "on their own terms"? The
filmmakers in their collaboration may have par¬
tially achieved such a relation, but they did
not necessarily intend to portray a "dynamic of
women relating to women on their own terms" in
the film. Quite the opposite, given that the
student in the film suffers a breakdown at the
hands of the school principal, herself a woman
and equally subject to patriarchal ideology's
exigencies. Nor did the filmmakers themselves
entirely escape that grasp. As Russo himself
points out, they made the film with two endings,
one in which the student hurls herself to her
death in a stairwell and another in which her
friends— all more or less similarly enchanted by
their teacher— save her.l

Perhaps Russo wishes to make up for his funda¬
mentally gay male analysis by writing "positive¬
ly" about the few lesbian-made films he*dis-
cusses. He makes the briefest of references to
Dorothy Arzner, only to dismiss her.

An obviously lesbian director like Dorothy
Arznep got away with her lifestyle because
she was officially closeted and because
"it made her one of the boys." But a man
who, like [James] Whale, openly admitted
his love relationship with another man,
did not stand a chance (p. 50).

But Russo romanticizes relationships between
women in MADCHEN so much that he seems to turn a
regimental girls' school into an amazon utopia.
This is not enough to excuse the fact that Russo
has ignored a lesbian perspective in the funda¬
mentals of his analysis. This lack cripples the
whole book, not just scarring the pages which
refer to lesbians.

To start with, saying gay and intending to
include lesbians under the umbrella roughly par¬
allels saying mankind and presuming to include
women. It's surprising behavior from someone
with Russo's credentials in the gay and lesbian
liberation movement--credentials that make
straights and not-yet-pol iticized gays and les¬
bians listen to him as if he knows the whole
score. Without lesbian feminism and the women's
movement's ever-changing tactics in general, the
gay and lesbian liberation movement would not
even have gained the meager ground which we are
all trying desperately to keep dyked up against
the submerging waters of an ever-mounting right.
The ground women gain for themselves also means
ground gained for homosexuals, no matter what
the antagonisms or hostility between the two
groups may be at any given moment.

On another level, Russo confuses filmmakers
and their films in an equally alarming way.
Confusing film life and real life, he pulls us
even further back than the antiquated camera
obscura model into the stone age of ideological
theory where art imitates or "reflects" life.

In just the two-page introduction and the first
three pages of Chapter One, variants on the word
"reflection" appear five times. 2 The problem¬
atic attitude isn't confined to the use of cer¬
tain words:

America's ostentatious fascination with
the difference between masculine and femi¬
nine behavior and society's absolute ter¬
ror of queerness, especially in men, con¬

tinued to be served by the requisite yard¬
stick sissy (p. 66).

Here he combines sexism with a rather simplistic
notion of the relation of "life" to "art." Cer¬
tainly the total lack of lesbians in feature
fiction film indicates that lesbians are much
more socially terrifying than gay men. Repre¬
sentations of relationships between homosexual
men can include, however maliciously and misrep-
resentationally, questions of patriarchal power
and male supremacy. Such treatments of these
questions are less culturally challenging than
depicting the radical ity of a member of society
attempting to define herself completely outside
of its central institutions.

Even if the relation were so blissfully sim¬
ple, MADCHEN would never have accurately "re¬
flected" the lives of German lesbians during the
Nazis' rise to power as merely the antiauthori¬
tarian metaphor which Russo misleadingly types
it as:

MADCHEN IN UNIFORM attacked conformity and
tyranny over peoples' minds and emotions,
using lesbianism as a means of rebelling
against authoritarianism just as Lillian
Heilman used it in THE CHILDREN'S HOUR to
attack the use of powerful lies as weapons

(p. 66).

Given lesbianism's track record as an effective
"means of rebelling," I can't understand why
anyone would "use" it. But to consider its use
in these two films, since lesbianism inherently
challenges the status quo, "authoritarianism"
and "lying" are narrative elements which might
represent that status quo and the way it perpet¬
uates itself. If anything, authoritarianism and
lying are used by the filmmakers to evidence the
society homosexuals are up against.

Russo's book is about the mainstream Hollywood
cinema, in which gays and lesbians have been
used and from which our real lives have been
excluded. Chapter One lists early, ostensibly
preconscious representations of homosexuals in
US film. It's called, "Who's a Sissy? Homo¬
sexuality According to Tinseltown." Chapter Two
("The Way We Weren't--The Invisible Years") pro¬
vides a litany of what the US censor boards ex¬
cerpted in the thirties, forties, and fifties
which might have indicated homosexual activity.
Chapter Three ("Frightening the Horses--0ut of
the Closets and Into the Shadows") enumerates
how filmmakers themselves qualified and censored
gay and lesbian content after the lifting of the
bureaucratic tip of a much more institutional¬
ized censorship iceberg. Chapter Four ("Strug¬
gle-Fear and Loathing in Gay Hollywood") seems
to include whatever was left of the seventies in
the card index that Russo hadn't already scant¬
ily embellished in the earlier chapters. The
book ends with startlingly uninformed praise for
major US television networks' approach to homo¬
sexuality.

We cannot approach self-definition within the
black hole of the Hollywood institution which
makes homosexuals impossibly other. And as fem¬
inist film critics have pointed out over the
past several years, the film apparatus--with its
physical, social, economic, and narrative trap-
pings--may not be able to depict women's physi¬
cal body and actual lives. In a different way,
such limitations in the cinematic institution
may affect homosexual men and lesbians as well.

Loving members of our own sex, we are socially
defined as homosexual by patriarchal capitalist
society's oppressive interests. In capitalism,
sexuality has become an organizational tool for
social regulation. As Jeffrey Weeks outlines
it:

A major way in which sexuality is regu¬
lated is through the process of categori¬
sation and the imposition of a grid of
definition upon the various possibilities
of the body and the various forms of ex¬
pression that "sex" can take. This in
turn should direct our attention to the
various institutions and social practices
which perform this role of organisation,
regulation, categorisation: various forms
of the family, but also legal regulation,
medical practices, psychiatric institu¬
tions and so on, all of which can be seen
as products of the capitalist organisation
of society. 3

As we are defined, among other things, we are
charged with delineating heterosexuality in re¬
lief: as a category our presence asserts the

Str'

THE CONSEQUENCE

negative, wnich safeguards heterosexuality and
heterosexual privilege. This is further prob-
lematized by the relative invisibility of gays
and lesbians. Russo says at the end of his
introduction, "We have co-operated for a very
long time in the maintenance of our own invisi¬
bility. And now the party's over" (p. xii).

But the invisible years referred to in Chapter
Two's title are far from over, either on the
screen or in the street.

We don't have "distinguishing characteris¬
tics." We aren't all one color. Or race. Or
nationality. Or age group. Or language group.
Or religion. Or class. So we can never know,
any more than our opponents, just what consti¬
tutes our numbers and our community. We have a
highly manipulable image which the "interested"
tailor to suit their needs. But what if the
tables were turned and we began to define our¬
selves in the ways in which we become visible?
This is one of the central tenets of the gay and
lesbian liberation movement. The movement pro¬
vides support for homos coming out who then in
their visible presence add to our understanding
of what it means to be homosexual at this his¬
torical juncture.

But whatever else we are, as gays and lesbians
we are only visible when we make the choice to
say we are--verbal ly or by consorting with
others of our kind in homo-identified places
like bars or demonstrations or through public
sex or dressing funny. This choice to cross the
line into some level of visibility is perhaps
the only "choice" that we have. We have no
choice in being or not being homos. We have no
choice in how those around us react to whatever
choice about visibility we make. More overt
social disadvantages exist for those of us who
are "out," but the problem no less damages the
closeted homo who in his or her silence remains
isolated from others gays and/or lesbians.

But Russo doesn't seem to understand the revo¬
lutionary potential of turning the tables on our
artificially constructed responsibility to main¬
tain heterosexual sovereignty. On page xii he
says, "There is enormous pressure to keep gay
people defined solely by our sexuality, which
prevents us from presenting our existence in
pol iticarterms." Politics and sexuality are
far from mutually exclusive terms. Quote for
quote, I retort with the words of film critic
Jacquelyn Zita:

With the politicization of lesbianism, the
oppressive split between public and pri¬
vate spheres in a lesbian woman's life has
been challenged. The lesbian body enters
the public sphere under a new currency of
signs which abrasively refuse misreading
and invisibility.^

Simply, our sexuality's existence can pose a
contradiction that creates a fissure in patriar¬
chal capitalist ideology, a fissure along which
to analyze and dismantle that ideology.

From his regrettably "satellite" location of

JUMP CUT NO. 28

GILDA

being homosexual now in the United States, Russo
has taken up a disturbingly passive monitoring
position for examining "our" image. He does
little to challenge our exile from the produc¬
tion of our own meaning. Thus the book devolves
into a roster of screen kisses; spotting someone
else's, Hollywood's, idea of a faggot or a dyke
basically validates a misconception. That mis¬
conception may come from conscious bigotry or
from the dominant ideology as it works through
and with popular culture industries and prod¬
ucts. But the relation of ideology to oppres¬
sion is another question, as is the question of
the relative efficacy of this presumed ideologi¬
cal function of Hollywood cinema. This possible
further investigation is roadblocked by Russo,
who keeps busy supporting Hollywood's images of
homos by gleefully pointing them out to the ex¬
clusion of alternatives.

He means well, and probably wanted to help
people know how to look at mainstream images,
but it's frustrating that he hasn't taken his
own advice. Of BOYS IN THE BAND he says:

But what scares Alan and the audience,
what they could not come to terms with or
understand, is the homosexuality of Hank
and Larry, who are both just as queer as
Emory yet "look" as straight as Alan. The
possibility that there could be non-stere¬
otypical homosexuals who are also staunch
advocates of a working gay relationship is
presented by the two lovers throughout the
film. And they are the two characters
most often ignored by critics and analysts
of the film (p. 175).

And he goes on to ignore them and the implica¬
tions of their characterizations, which he him¬
self has outlined.

Politically, how can Russo disregard the prob¬
lematic of film's representational apparatus
abutted against the literal invisibility of most
homos? Granted, a list of gay and lesbian
screen images is still, unfortunately, a bold
event of visibility in itself. But he is wrong
to presume that merely to publish this list of
the kinds of homos already on screen can bust up
the "party" of heteroideology. And a list is
certainly not information on which to propose a
radical cultural practice for gay media--or
rather, since Russo seems to consider gay media
nonprofessional, gays in the media.

Filmmakers, and consequently their audiences,
identify faggots and dykes in the film usually
through the characters' extreme dress or behav¬
ior. Such cinematic codification is a sort of
exaggerated version of our own limited choices
for visibility. In fact, film theorists long
since should have taken up the image of. homos in
the movies as a perfect example on which to de¬
velop a prototypic theory of ideology and repre¬
sentation: if society has all kinds of homos who
are mostly invisible, then whatever "identi¬
fiable" image of them that exists must be per¬
fectly ideological. The gay and lesbian com¬
munity does have the sound beginnings of a body
of information for such a project--The Lesbian
Herstory project, Lesbians of Colour, Le Re-
groupement des Lesbiennes de Classse Ouvriere,
magazines like The Body Politic, Gay Asian, and
so on. Meanwhile, what idea does the public
(straight and homo) have of our lives and our
numbers if they think only drag queens are gay?
Russo gives extremely limited references to the
lives real gays and lesbians were living through
the three-fourths of this century during which
were produced the screen images he calls up. On
what basis are readers to make comparisons so as

to evaluate the function and effect of the
screen image?

The premise of Russo's book does not confront
the fact that the misrepresentation of gays and
lesbians in film correctly represents our social
predicament, i.e., we simply do not get the op¬
portunity to present ourselves. There is an
unresolved tension in the book between what
Russo rightly claims is film's representation of
homosexuality by sex acts alone and the lack of
filmed representation of real homosexual life of
which sex is a part in a similar but obviously
more socially complex way to that of hetero¬
sexuals. Claiming that gays are looking for
homosexual "sensibility" and not homosexual
characters, Russo also bitterly complains when
"obviously" homosexual or lesbian characters
don't overtly give evidence to this fact by sex¬
ual contact. Because Russo does not realize
that in this apparent contradiction, the real
political problem of sexuality and representa¬
tion lies, his book fails to leave anything be¬
hind it but a smoke that obscures the fire it
indicates.

What is the sensibility I have that Russo
thinks I want to see twinned in a Hollywood
f i Im?

Gay sensibility is largely a product of
oppression, of the necessity to hide so
well for so long. It is a ghetto sensi¬
bility, born of the need to develop and
use a second sight that will translate
silently what the world sees and what the
actuality may be. It was a gay sensibil¬
ity that, for exmaple, often enabled some
lesbians and gay men to see at very early
ages, even before they knew the words for
what they were, something on the screen
that they knew related to their lives in
some way, without being able to put a
finger on it (p. 92).

I question that only "some" lesbians and gay men
can tell. After all, the images go through the
straight-machine of Hollywood before reaching
their consumers. Whatever film may be, it is far
from unintentional. There are no accidental
homo images or allusions that just happen to
slip in, waiting to be noticed by those of us
wearing rose-colored glasses; they all have a
reason and a function, not always bearing a con¬
structive message.

Russo's romantic assumptions about intuition
also ignore at their peril important film ques¬
tions about audience identification, project,
and desire. And the viewers' bricolage is here
reduced to a kind of furtive activity of under¬
dogs instead of one that film invites itself.
Russo's zealousness in "reclaiming" imagery
tells more about these questions than does his
articulation of the process. Is it reclamation
or stealing to talk about Katharine Hepburn's
male drag in SYLVIA SCARLETT solely in terms of
gay male sexuality? A surprising number of
Russo's "faggot heroines" such as Elizabeth Tay¬
lor, Deitrich, Hepburn, and Garbo are women all
the same, no matter what they may be "forced" to
wear on screen. Russo discusses the subtly am¬
biguous relationship between the two male leads
in GILDA but he doesn't explore where this
leaves the characterization of Gilda herself--
especially in relation to women in the audience.
Even straight men win out in this book before
lesbians do:

You can like or dislike the lesbian char¬
acters in MANHATTAN, and you can even ar¬
gue that Allen is neurotic in his reaction

to them, out it is an argument that you
would win quickly. Allen is neurotic for
a living and MANHATTAN is a great film (p.
240).

Excuses, excuses.

★ * *

Throughout The celluloid Closet run recurring
themes that should have been dealt with much
more intelligently. One is the chorus of filmed
bars, the kind you drink at rather than the kind
you spend time behind (though both understand¬
ably haunt the book). Russo lists appearances
of gay bars, in films as varied as CALL HER SAV¬
AGE, ADVISE AND CONSENT, THE KILLING OF SISTER
GEORGE, SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE . . ., AND
CRUISING.

Hollywood's bars depict the ghetto as a physi¬
cal fact rather than the amorphous, cross-cul¬
tural culture that it is. Of course, film makes
us less frightening when it can encage us in
what looks like self-enforced captivity: the
camera becomes a zookeeper of sorts, both privi¬
leged .and protected by cinematic and social
architecture. This in part derives from the
representation/invisibility problematic I de¬
scribed before: the bar represents the epitome
of "becoming visible by consorting. "5 In ignor¬
ing the problem of the relation of representa¬
tion to gay and lesbian (in)visibility, Russo
himself falls into the trap of conflating bar
and ghetto. Here he explains a scene in the
1932 film, CALL HER SAVAGE, in a Village gay and
lesbian bar (it's a rare enough mix in real life
and uncommented upon by Russo):

The ghetto was one other world in which
gays could regularly be found on screen
both before and after the reign of the
[censorship] code. The underworld life as
a haven for homosexuals is a staple of
music and literature, and of course this
reflects the reality of most gay experi¬
ence which has been limited to expression
in ^ettos of one sort or another from the
beginning of time. The gay ghetto has
often been connected to the underworld to
the extent that wherever illicit activity
flourishes, organized crime moves in to
control it and turn a profit (p. 43).

But not just organized crime does the control¬
ling here. The state profits, too, though its
profits are not directly financial. On the
grounds that bars and baths create crime around
them (classically, the crime of blackmail), many
laws are created, enforced, and stretched to
close these places, further marginalizing and
segregating homosexuals. This puts us in even
further jeopardy. When the state can make most
of our social activities criminal, this assures
the invisibility that makes possible the manipu¬
lation of our image and the further ideological
equation of homo desire and criminality.

This constructed ambiguity of the relation
between homosexuality and criminality makes
films like CRUISING, which Russo rightfully de¬
plores, possible and plausible. In it, "a New
York City, policeman, assigned to capture a psy¬
chotic killer of gay men, becomes aware of his
own homosexuality and commences murdering gays"
(p. 236). The film has as a premise the con¬

tagion theory par excellence. In rubbing shoul¬
ders and other things in New York leather bars,
the cop not only "catches" homosexuality but he
catches crime and violence as well, twin virii
that Russo's microscope hasn't focused on.
Russo's background information for CALL HER SAV¬
AGE serves only to entrench the more believ¬
able— or shall we say more representable— con¬
ception of the ghetto ending at the (illegal)
bar door.

But the ghetto doesn't end at the bar door,
regardless of how few film homos would be recog¬
nizable outside its walls. In fact, the bar is
where it really begins. As Ken Popert has writ¬
ten:

It is worth remembering that the current,
unexhausted wave of gay struggle began
more than a decade ago in a bar. Bars and
baths are to the gay movement what facto¬
ries are to the labour movement: the con¬
text in which masses of people acquire a
shared sense of identity and the ability
to act together for the common good. 6

Even Russo's two allusions to the 1969 riots
outside the Stonewall Bar neglect to mention
this aspect of life in the bars, and his commen¬
tary on CALL HER SAVAGE does anything but naysay
the image the film itself projects.

Life behind bars is a whole other question.
There we are literally put in our place. Anoth¬
er dog-eared myth about homosexuality is the
notion that confinement makes biologically im¬
perative a replication and division of sex
roles: the man-the-animal approach compares gays
in prison to male rats stuffed *':g«ther in small
cages and thereby sees them as ‘driven" to homo¬
sexuality. Russo comments that FORTUNE AND
MEN'S EYES producer Persky launched an ad cam¬
paign with lines like, "What goes on in prison
is a crime," and that he backed up his lurid
directorial approach with interviews saying,

"It's true. Homosexuality is still a crime in
45 out of 50 states." In this way of thinking,
homosexuality is punished with isolation from
the opposite sex and society in general because
it is a product of isolation from same. Another
brick in the architecture of homo-criminal is.

Such circular logic always provides a clue to

JUMP CUT NO. 28

the interests that produce this kind of ideology
in order to protect themselves, here to maintain
the negativity of homosexuality against which is
built the positivity of heterosexuality. But
Russo neither sees nor interrupts that circle.
Rather, he cribs from Stuart Byron's ten-year-
old review of the film to say that FORTUNE'S
violence stands as a lesson to gay men to con¬
front their assimilation of heterosexual role
posturing. Throwing the onus back on gay men,
he closes in quoting Jack Babuscio's review of
FORTUNE and Genet's CHANT O' AMOUR: "The real
prison, [Genet] seems to be saying, is within.

It is the flesh that resists the pressures of
homosex in the celluloid cage" (p. 200).

Both prisons, within and without, are equally
real in regulating our actions. The celluloid
cage is exactly that: gay and lesbian characters
are figments of a director's socialized imagina¬
tion, and figments do not have the power to
either act on or "resist" whatever the desires
may be which an audience might project upon
them.

Compare the four and a half pages of what
could best be called compassionate discussion
about sex and gender in FORTUNE with what Russo
had to say earlier, in the book about CAGED, a
1950 film set in a women's prison:

Because movies continue to reflect male
and female role playing in both homosexual
and heterosexual relations, gays can never
measure up. . . . No matter that the havoc
caused by role playing has devastated re¬
lations between men and women as well as
between members of the same sex; homosexu¬
als are Harrys and Charlies, queer imita¬
tions of the allegedly healthy norm. FOR¬
TUNE AND MEN'S EYES went out of its way to
reflect onscreen this kind of slavish imi¬
tation of society's roles by changing the
basis of John Herbert's play . . . from a
comment on sex as power to an exploitation
of sex as a matter of gender identifica¬
tion (p. 198).

Mannish, aggressive, and a killer, the
matron Evelyn Harper is another kind of
user. The women's prison of CAGED provides
the most controlled and therefore the most
specific kind of ghetto situation, one in
which the sexual perversity of aliens is
highly stereotyped.... In the prison of
CAGED, where the pretenses of polite society
are ripped away, there is an astonishing
amount of lesbianism. The world of CAGED is
a total underworld, corrupting and brilliantly
drawn. Like the reflections of homosexuality
in the cinema noir of the forties, lesbianism
appears here as a product of an outlaw social
structure— it comes with the territory.

Evelyn Harper, the super-aggressive bull-dyke,
brutalizes the women while vice queen Elvira
Powell (Lee Patrick) seduces them into prosti¬
tution with a sweet smile and a lecherous
gaze (p. 102).

I get it. Russo doesn't think that Byron's
call for an analysis of the straight-jacket of
sexual roles applies to women. At least, not if
they're in prison. Or rather, not if they're in
a different film than that which inspired By¬
ron's plea.

But film presents different forms of confine¬
ment and their gradations are the gradations of
class. Class is something that Russo doesn't
talk much about, presumably because the films
don't. But that's the best reason to do so. If
the imprisoned in SCARECROW, CAGED, FORTUNE, and
MIDNIGHT EXPRESS represent the criminal under¬
class, then the army, military schools, and pri¬
vate boys' and girls' boarding schools all stand
for rungs up the class ladder of confinement,
varying as they do in their relative voluntari¬
ness and their relation to criminality and
guilt. The difference between faggots and dykes
in prison and adventurous girls in school dormi¬
tories implicitly indicates that the former are
depraved and the latter, by dint of affording a
private education, are merely decadent.

This is not to ignore the hierarchies within
these situations— who are the confined without
their jailors? But although in MADCHEN IN UNI¬
FORM the headmistress locks Manuela up, both of
them are equally kept by the army-officer fa¬
thers who hired the former to keep the latter a
virgin till marriage. Here the film gives evi¬
dence that the jailor is not the one we see. In
other films the jailor is a scapegoat of the
class interests which require prisons to give
weight to the laws enforcing money's power, even
in a film. Evelyn Harper and Elvira Powell are
not the camp celebrations of butch and femme
that Russo sees.

Another important and ill-explored theme in
The Celluloid Closet is that: of the homo murder
and suicide. Such a fate is much in evidence
and well documented in the book--Russo has com¬
piled a necrology as an addendum. However,
film's x-ing out of homos has a more complicated
genesis than Russo's assumption that the antigay
hostility of life finds wish fulfillment in
film. Only those things signified in the sym¬
bolic order that film represents exist on film.
Invariably in narrative features, murder or sui¬
cide and the sudden "coming out" or visibiliza-
tion of the homosexual coincide. Let's presume
that the character seems to stand as self-deter¬
mined and no longer has an admissible place or
function according to dominant ideology (as op¬
posed to within dominant ideology, where he or
she asserts the socially necessary negative);
this character can literally no longer be repre¬
sented and must be done away with. Perhaps we

should look at this phenomenon in terms of the
demands of most Hollywood films' narrative
structure. Often a character will embody an
"evil" of which other characters (and perhaps
the audience) are implicitly guilty: to absolve
this guilt, the film disposes of the personifi¬
cation of the evil. These are important issues
for all of us to be discussing, whether or not
as propositions they prove adequate for homos
and film, whether or not Russo thinks they're
too "academic" for a "mass" audience.

Russo skims the issue in outlining the plot of
THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE: "The 'killing' of
Sister George is the process by which George's
overt lesbianism is punished by forcing her into
invisibility" (p. 172). Between the title and
action of this film, in which George does not
physically die, a relation of great importance
is posited between homo visibility and represen¬
tation. This relation is elaborated on the
plane of a metaphoric murder in which represen¬
tation proves itself unequal to that which
exists, exposing its ideological nature. Since
this is lost on Russo, he can't very well take
director Robert Aldrich's proposition and apply
is to other films. Aldrich even pressed the
point in THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE: George
has the job of a character actress in a BBC-TV
soap opera, where she exists (is significant) as
straight until her off -camera lesbianism
threatens to make real pjress headlines, at which
point her BBC producer has her soap opera char¬
acter killed off. What could be a more evident
paradigm?

Russo ends the book with a grim foreboding
that television can do the trick that film ap¬
parently can't, regardless of Sister George's
predicament. Here Russo even more unquestion-
ingly accepts the medium under observation. Gay
director Rosa Von Praunheim is mentioned and
lesbian director Barbara Hammer is not as Russo
glosses over independent gay and lesbian produc¬
tion and its importance. He claims instead that
television is "more vulnerable" to "activist
pressures than was the motion picture industry"
because it is "subject to regulation by the Fed¬
eral Communications Commission and to the reac¬
tions of its advertisers and vocal public opin¬
ion" (p. 221).

Given the overwhelming swing to the right, the
extraordinary il logic of this statement amazes
me. The Federal Communications Commission is
the Reagan administration. Advertisers are the
multinationals which profit most from the econ¬
omic base of the nuclear family. And vocal pub¬
lic opinion is most strongly heard from the
heavily financially backed Moral Majority. "A
film may have to be a hit, but when a television
show flops, there's always next week and another
subject" (p. 221). Above and beyond the naivete
about the Nei Isons, Russo ignores the fact that
a weekly show also has more possibility to re¬
inforce given social roles.

With the exception of the documentary about
Quentin Crisp's life, THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT,^
all the television programs commended by Russo
are f iction--scripted, manipulated, charmingly
complicated fiction. THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT
does not have a much better form. A biography
of sorts, it depicts the life of a man who, as
Russo admits, "makes public hay of the fact that
he is not a gay militant, but he may in fact
have been one of the first gay activists in his
own passive way" (p. 224) (italics mine). Crisp
is a pretty queeny character--for the producers
of entertainment, visible is risible, which is
why Crisp rather than, say, Walt Whitman gets
the dubious honor of televised immortality.

Two documentaries which go unnoted are CBS's
GAY POWER, GAY POLITICS and the state-owned Ca¬
nadian Broadcasting Corporation's SHARING THE
SECRET. (I believe that the latter is being
distributed in the States as an independent film
through the gay network and the advertisements
in papers like The Advocate,) Much like narra¬
tive films, "documentaries" are only worth mak¬
ing to make a point. George Smith, a Toronto
graduate student at "’^he Ontario Institute for
Studies in Education and the chairman of Cana¬
da's Right to Private Committee, is working on a
thesis analyzing the CBS production of GAY
POWER, GAY POLITICS. To quote from an excerpt
which appeard in fuse magazine:

The result is a series of images and con¬
ceptions divorced from reality--a kind of
life in tv land. In this case, CBS's ac¬
count of the gay community rails to in¬
clude, for example. Black, Asian or His¬
panic gays. There are no older people.

And what is of particular interest, there
are no women. It is a cardboard community
of white, mostly middle class, "macho"
men, where the elite spend their time at
cocktail parties and the rest simply walk
the streets and cruise the parks in search
of sex. 7

Smith later clearly indicates the way in which
the program's editing and direction are viru¬
lently antigay. In the same issue of fuse, John
Greyson dissects SHARING THE SECRET. Called
"Telling Secrets," Greyson's article omits one
secret maybe he didn't know: one of the. five men
"interviewed" for the "documentary" was an act¬
or. So much for television, Russo's great white
hope.

Though it is important to know what was cut
from films and what was originally scripted,
which actors turned down parts or took them de¬
manding certain cuts. The celluloid closet of¬

fers a peculiar mix of jumbled listing and half-
baked analysis. It roughly follows a chronolog¬
ical order but chronology does not make a his¬
tory. The snippets of scenes to which Russo
draws our attention have little meaning other
than reiterative since he enumerates one after
another, independently of the scenes which sur¬
rounded them, the other films made at the same
time, the straight images created in parallel
with homo images, the situation of gays and les¬
bians in other forms of cultural representation,
and the history of the libertation movement it¬
self. We are also talking about a century in
which women got the vote and there were two
world wars, all of which involved an immeasur¬
able upheaval in sex roles, and film has had an
undeniable importance in mediating that upheav¬
al. Russo mentions most of this, but he uses
none of it as a way of looking at his material.
Furthermore, he never mentions pornography,
which is a major portion of Hollywood's film
market production. Such a discussion might have
afforded a clearer connection to the economic
questions which play so large a part in the cre¬
ation of film images and would have brought into
focus a discussion of voyeurism.

The Celluloid Closet is not a materialist fem¬
inist book about sexual representation and ide¬
ology by a sexual liberation activist. It is a
book about straight images of homosexual people
by a liberal gay man. I don't know why I
thought Harper and Row would publish anything
else. The horde of information that Russo has
carefully gathered is a primary stage of re¬
search. Let's hope someone else does something
with it but quick. It's too bad we don't know
yet what form of representation, if any, will
take place after the radical reordering that is
required to free homosexuality from the kind of
marginal ity that necessitates both this book and
a better one.

Ifor an informative analysis of MADCHEN IN UNI¬
FORM including important historical refer¬
ences, see B. Ruby Rich, "MAEDCHEN IN UNIFORM:
From Repressive Tolerance to Erotic Litera-
tion," JUMP CUT, no. 24/25. Russo's other
continental diversion in the book is also to
Germany, where he discusses, among others,
Hirschfield's ANDERS DIE ANDEREN, released
twelve years before MADCHEN in 1919. It is
discussed mostly for its political importance
since, unlike MADCHEN, it was not screened in
North America. Hirschfield was a major and
vocal opponent of homosexual oppression.

Russo gives here an historical reference, but
he gives a peculiarly one-sided view of the
provenance and roots of a movement which has
learned so much from the political activities
of women.

2 The screen work of gays as well as

straights has reflected the closet mental¬
ity almost exclusively until very recently
(p. xii).

And when the fact of our existence became
unavoidable, we were reflected, onscreen
and off, as dirty secrets (p. xii).

The predominantly masculine character of
the earliest cinema reflected an America
that saw itself as a recently conquered
wilderness (p. 5).

Men who were perceived to be "like women"
were simply mamma's boys, reflections of
an overabundance of female influence (p.
6).

The idea of homosexuality first emerged
onscreen, then, as an unseen danger, §
reflection of our fears about the perils
of tampering with male and female roles

(p. 6).

This recurs throughout the book. See also
quotes referring to prison films later in this
text.

^Jeffrey Weeks, "Capitalism and the Organisa¬
tion of Sex," in Homosexuality: Power and Pol¬
itics, ed. Gay Left Collective. London: Al¬
lison and Busby, 1980, p. 14.

^Jacquelyn Zita, "The Films of Barbara Hammer:
Counter-Currencies of a Lesbian Iconography,"
JUMP CUT, no. 24/25.

^Russo points to this when he mentions that a
doctor's secretary lost her job when she was
spotted in a press photo taken on the set of
THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE. The set was a
lesbian bar, the Gateways Club, and the secre¬
tary an unwitting extra.

^Ken Popert, "Public Sexuality and Social
Space," The Body Politic, no. 85 ( July/August,
1982).

^George Smith, "Telling Stories," Fuse, March/
April 1981.

iteDISARMAMENT
CALENDAR lor 1988

Published bv the Syracuse Cultural Workers Project
PHOTOGRAPHSFROM THE GROWING INTERNATIONAL
DISARMAMENT MOVEMENT INCLUDING WEST
GERMANY, THE USSR AND ENGLAND AND WITH
SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON THE JUNE 12, 1982 NEW YORK
CITY MARCH

By mail $6.50 each, 3 lor $17, we'll send ^ilt cards. In stores $5
each. 3 lor $14. Wholesale rates available to groups, bookstores,
coops, etc. All orders prepaid please.

THE DISARMAMENT CALENDAR FOR 1983

PO Box 6367, Syracuse NY 13217 (315) 474-1132 _

t I

JUMP CUT NO. 28

The social problem film

MEET JOHN DOE

Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy. The Hollywood
Social Problem Film: Madness, Despair, and Poli¬
tics from the Depression to the Fifties. Bloom¬
ington: Indiana University Press, 1981, 364
pages, HB $25.00, PB $12.95.

--Jeremy Butler

There's nothing like a deep-dish movie to
drive them out into the open.

—Veronica Lake
SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS

Genre film study currently languishes in an
uncertain state. The question of whether or not
it is a "respectable" methodology now seems un¬
necessary; obviously these most popular of popu¬
lar art forms can tell us much about ourselves
and our culture. But a new group of problems
has arisen. What is the conceptual framework of
genre study as it has thus far evolved: Warshow,
Bazin, Kaminsky, Kitses, McArthur, Everson, et
al.? (And why has the Western so dominated ana¬
lysts' attention?) What theoretical constructs
should genre analysis incorporate? And, on a
more practical level, who possesses sufficient
knowledge of the cinema (history and theory),
sociology. United States history, current theo¬
ries of ideology, semiotics, and, some would
contend, psychoanalysis needed to properly ana¬
lyze American genres in the context of American
society?

Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy's The Hollywood
Social Problem Film illustrates the difficulties
that confront the genre analyst. They begin
with two probable, but theoretically unsupport¬
ed, premises: (1) the "Hollywood social problem
film" exists and (2) it was particularly impor¬
tant during the 1930s and 1940s. These premises
originate in the popular, empirically derived
conception of the so-called "movie with a mes¬
sage." Roffman and Purdy barely pause to exam¬
ine the evolution of the problem film concept
before they proceed to chronicle it through four
historical periods: (1) the system breaks down:
the individual as victim, 1930-1933; (2) the
system upheld: the individual redeemed, 1933-
1941; (3) fascism and war; and (4) the postwar
world. The methodological trouble now begins in
earnest, for their unarticulated assumptions
about the cinema and ideology, coupled with the
intuited tenets of the problem film genre, tan¬
gle about their ankles like a bothersome vine.

If they want to preach a sermon, let them
hire a hall.

—Terry Ramsaye

The definition of a genre, any genre, remains
a thorny issue. It goes without saying that
definitions are determined by the critic, not
inherent in the films, and thus these defini¬
tions are ever always delimited by ideology.

The most we can hope for is a precise, unambigu¬
ous, and systematic set of criteria. For Roff¬
man and Purdy, the social problem film is char¬
acterized in this manner:

The focus of the genre is very specific:
The central dramatic conflict revolves
around the interaction of the individual
with social institutions (such as govern¬
ment, business, political movements,
etc.). While the genre places great im¬
portance on the surface mechanisms of so¬
ciety, there is only an indirect concern
with broader social values (those of the
family, sexuality, religion, etc.), the
values that function behind the mechan¬
isms.^

Throughout this book, "government, business,
political movements" are assumed to comprise
what are called "politics" and are thus the
rightful province of a social problem film anal¬
ysis. "The family, sexuality, religion" are
grouped as "social values," rather than "insti¬
tutions," and are associated with sentiment and
melodrama. The Hollywood social problem film is
repeatedly criticized for displacing general
"politics" into personal "melodrama." Or, bet¬
ter, politics and sentiment/melodrama are seen
as opposite poles, occasionally conflicting with
one another. Consider this comment on Frank
Borzage's THREE COMRADES: "The death imagery and
sentimental fatalism so characteristic of Bor-
zage serves to further deemphasize the poli¬
tics. "2 Quite the contrary, I would argue, fa¬
talism, sentimentality, and the attitude toward
death are the politics of Borzage's film.

Roffman and Purdy's understanding of social
problems is based, therefore, on a too-narrow
conception of social institutions. They assume
the institutions are mere vessels to be filled
with social values. Moreover, the social values
they name (the family, for example) might well
be considered institutions (see Althusser).
Ideology (socal values) and ideological state
apparatuses (social institutions) cannot be so
simply separated. Roffman and Purdy claim that
the social problem film addresses is only insti¬
tutions, but they themselves admit, "In a very
broad sense, a coherent ideological vision of
the world is acted out in every [Hollywood] For¬
mula movie"3— hence, in every social problem
film. Since ideological criticism is so broad
and unmanageable, Roffman and Purdy imply, they
will study only the films that deal directly
with institutions, not with values. However,
this limitation proves to be a difficult one for
them to maintain. In the chapter devoted to
Frank Capra (more about their vestigial auteur-
ism below), they laud his films because, "His
purpose was to 'integrate ideals and entertain¬
ment into a meaningful tale,' so that the films
are not so much about politics as they are about
people whose crises reflect political view¬
points."^ Couldn't the same thing be said about
THREE COMRADES, or GONE WITH THE WIND, or RAID¬
ERS OF THE LOST ARK?

Why do Roffman and Purdy jump from the person¬
al to the general, from sentiment to politics,
from values to institutions, with Capra but not
with many, many others? One chapter, "The Indi¬
vidual and Society: Darker Views of the Postwar
World, "5 is indeed devoted to films which they
acknowledge do not even truly belong within the
genre— BODY AND SOUL, FORCE OF EVIL, and MON¬
SIEUR VERDOUX. "They are instead films which
exhibit a political purpose without treating a
limited social situation or problem, "o they ex¬
plain. In contrast, the proper problem film's
"function is to present a problem that calls for
circumscribed change rather than to call into
question some of the deeper values at the foun¬
dation of society. "7 In short, the problem film
addresses the institution; a film such as FORCES
OF EVIL speaks to the supposedly distinct values
supporting the institutions. Once again, I must
ask, can such a distinction, between institu¬
tions and values, be made with any clarity or
systematicityl If this distinction eludes us,
as I believe it does, then the social problem
film "genre" will be forever lacking perimeters.

In certain pictures I do hope they will
leave the cinema a little enriched, but I
don't make them pay a buck and a half and
then ram a lecture down their throats.

—Billy Wilder

Perhaps these definitional criticisms are mere
academic pedantry. After all, few genre studies
are conscientious enough to specify their own
assumptions. In fairness, therefore, I now turn
to the book's aim as Roffman and Purdy state it:

The purpose of this study is to provide a
comprehensive overview of the cycles and
patterns of the genre, examining the rela¬
tionship between political issues and mov¬
ie conventions, between what happened in
American society and what appeared on its
screens. 8

The Hollywood Social Problem Film iS one Of
the more substantive approaches to genre. The
305 pages of text (excluding 17 photographs)
make it the longest genre study in my bookcase-
putting to shame Horizons West's photograph-
filled 175 pages (including filmographies).

With the qualifications articulated above, Roff¬
man and Purdy do reasonably interpret the plots
of their favorite social problem films: I AM A
FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG, GRAPES OF WRATH,

DEAD END, YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE, the Capra films,
and many others. (Minimal attention is paid to
cinematic style— as in most genre studies. Why

is it that we assume style produces meaning only
in film noir?) They also provide a credible
bibliography, although it is a little slanted
toward material on "behind-the-scenes" Holly¬
wood. They also list several journals, includ¬
ing Cashiers du Cinema (The English and not the
French edition!) and screen, but not jump cut.

As a gesture toward the comprehensiveness men¬
tioned in their statement of purpose, they in¬
clude a filmography of approximately 230 titles,
noting release date, studio, director, script¬
writer, producer, and principal cast— in that
order. Certainly work of this breadth needs to
be encouraged. Were cinema scholarship truly
mature we would have at least three or four such
books on each major genre.

How then does the present book fair as genre
analysis? As Roffman and Purdy explain, they
are concerned with the conventions first of
all, of Hollywood classicism — the "Formula," as
they refer to it. They specify several of clas¬
sicism's characteristics: linear narrative, in¬
dividual protagonist, conflict expressed in
terms of violent action, covert expression of
sexuality, clear-cut, gratifying plot resolu¬
tion, studio mise-en-scene, and SO on. Within
this Formula, the problem film articulates its
own recurrent pattern:

. . . arouse indignation over some facet
of contemporary life, carefully qualify
any criticism so that it can in the end be
reduced to simple causes, to a villain
whose removal rectifies the situation.
Allusions to the genuine concerns of the
audience play up antisocial feelings only
to exorcise them on safe targets contained
within a dramatic rather than social con¬
text. 9

The Hollywood Social Problem Film is Strongest
when its authors concentrate on this pattern's
deployment in classical Hollywood films; weak¬
nesses become apparent, however, as they try to
fix responsibility for any one particular film.

In this endeavor they fall back on that potpour¬
ri that has defined cinema history until recent¬
ly: studio chronicles (usually lacking any fi¬
nancial records), star biography and memoirs,
popular sociology, and occasional director or
producer histories (Capra, Hitchcock, Cohn,
Lubitsch, and so on). How each film is contex¬
tualized by Roffman and Purdy depends upon well-
worn cinematic truisms. Hence, I AM A FUGITIVE
is discussed in terms of its studio (Warners)
while MEET JOHN DOE is considered only in the
context of its director (Capra). Occasionally
an actor's screen persona dominates a film's
discussion: for example, "If the persecutions
are familiar and the finale all too predictable
[in DUST BE MY DESTINY], Garfield's cynicisms
still rings true. "10 if no studio, director/
producer, or star seems to deserve credit for
some aspect of a film, then Roffman and Purdy
fall back on questionable ideological con¬
structs:

. . . the hard facts of the Depression
demanded a shift in subject matter. Latin
lovers and college flappers [of the 1920s]
now seemed rather remote, completely unre¬
lated to the changed mood and the overrid¬
ing preoccupation with social breakdown.

The romantic ideals of the thirties had to
be more firmly grounded in a topical con¬
text. H

The hard facts of a society's material condi¬
tions cannot "demand" a shift in its cinema's
context. Roffman and Purdy's naive conception
of the society/cinema relationship in the 1930s
can be sustained only if one is willing to over¬
look immensely popular films such as THE GAY
DIVORCEE, A NIGHT AND THE OPERA, and other simi¬
larly "escapist" fare. I assume they must know
better than to posit a direct causal link be¬
tween society and the cinema, but instances such
as the above do not indicate even a working un¬
derstanding of contemporary writings on ideol¬
ogy.

Looking back at their stated purpose, then, I
cannot help but be disappointed. What troubles
me most is the reliance upon notions of the ge¬
nius auteur redeeming Formula conventions: King
Vidor's "classic social films of the late twen¬
ties and early thirties— THE CROWD (1928), HAL¬
LELUJAH! (1929), STREET SCENE (1931), OUR DAILY
BREAD (1934)— are very personal essays that es¬
chew most of the Formula trappings. "12 As hap¬
pens so frequently in genre analysis, we are
promised a study of genre codes and their evolu¬
tion, but the authors deliver, largely, another
auteur analysis (see Kitses, McArthur). Roffman
and Purdy emphasize those films which they feel
contain a "tension between a conventional form
and a radical vision,"13 in so doing, they fall
prey to the old Romantic misconception of the
artist, toiling away in his (the masculine pro¬
noun is significant) garret, outside of the in¬
fluence of conventions and formulas. Does it
need to be restated that (1) all art is coded
and (2) the relative perceptibility of the codes
to a particular critic does not make the artwork
better or worse?

Finally, I must articulate one additional
criticism of the book as film history. Although
it is important in a study of this nature to
make as many definitive statements as possible,
it would be more prudent if the authors had al-

lowed for some qualifications. Roffman and
Purdy state, "The sole films to indicate any
concrete relation between the heroine's prosti¬
tution and social circumstances are THE EASIEST
WAY (1931) and FAITHLESS (1932)."14 My first
thought upon reading this was of MARKED WOMAN
(1937), in which the women's work as "cafe hos¬
tesses" (in name only) is repeatedly placed in
the context of their economic situation. As¬
signing terms such as "the first" or "sole" to
genre films is an unnecessary exercise and a
scholastically dangerous one.

Well: all that can be said is that the
contrast between learning and amusing one¬
self is not laid down by divine rule; it
is not one that has always been and must
continue to be.

—Bertolt Brecht

In sum, The Bollywood Social Problem Film is
laden with many methodological problems— arising
from the authors' empiricism and lack of suffi¬
cient self-criticism. However, it is an impor¬
tant book in its aspiration. We do need to un¬
derstand, as they state, the relationship "be¬
tween what happened in American society and what
appeared on its screens." And, indeed, films
which overtly apply themselves to social "is¬
sues" are a very tempting topic. But, most im¬
portantly, this endeavor must be made with the
help of theoretical tools which we are still in
the process of forging— tools that will help us
understand the relationship of culture and so¬
ciety and, thus, the functioning of ideology.

Ipeter Roffman and Jim Purdy, The Hollywood
Social Problem Film: Madness, Despair, and
Politics from the Depression to the Fifties
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981),
p. viii.

2lbid., p. 210.

3lbid., p. 6

^Ibid., p. 180.

5lbid., pp. 268-83.

GRAPES OF WRATH

6lbid., p. 269.
7lbid.

8lbid., p. X.

9lbid., p. 305.
lOlbid., p. 149.

l^Ibid., p. 15.
12lbid., p. 58.
13ibid., p. 7.
14lbid., p. 22.

KNOWLEDGE & PO WER

--Michael Selig

Edward W. Said. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts

Determine How We See the Rest of the World. New York: Pantheon

Books, 1981. 186 pages.

Scholars rarely examine the political consequences of the knowledge they
produce. After all, if they admit that a political dimension exists in aca¬
demic activities; they then question the truth value of their own disci pi in
and intellectual affiliations, thus risking treasured prestige and conse¬
quently some power. In film studies, when scholars resist taking a self-
conscious political stance, most often that resistance manifests itself as
their doing supposedly apolitical formal analysis or historical research.
Nevertheless, the medium of cinema still lacks aesthetic justification con¬
ceded to more traditional art forms, and is thus particularly open to poli¬
tical analysis. Since academics find the commercial mass media in general
as having so little cultural value, in fact, and consider its commercial and
industrial foundation so obvious, their suspicious attitude towards it (un¬
like attitudes towards literature, say) seems "natural."

In Covering Islam, however, Edward Said's political analysis of mass
media coverage of the Islamic world opens up areas normally unexplored in
mass media studies. We assume that the mass media may powerfully influence
public opinion, especially about foreign affairs. However, what Said demon¬
strates throughout is that media opinions quite often derive from those
academic and government "experts" to whom the media provides a forum. In
other words, Said's contribution to media studies is the manner in which he
situates the mass media within the context of their dependence on specific
sources of information, principally academic and government institutions,
for the knowledge the media disseminate. This is true of not only the news
but also of supposedly "serious" drama, such as PBS's presentation of DEATH
OF A PRINCESS.!

With Covering Islam, Said extends his analysis of cultural images of
Islam, a project also undertaken in his generally historical Orientalism
(1978) and more specific The Question of Palestine (1979). Here he deals
with how the mass media produce popular images of Islam. He demonstrates
how a centuries-old, academically-produced image of the Islamic world has
operated to foster Western colonialism. And he further shows how such nega¬
tive imagery, repeated in media news, drama, and advertising, operates to
justify America's hegemonic claims on Arab lands. In Covering Islam, Said
employs the same critical tools he utilized in Orientalism, demonstrating
that certain interests underlie the interpretation of other cultures and
promote the institutionalization of certain interpretations as "knowledge."
With this critical tool. Said moves to unravel the interests in Western
society, especially in the United States, which operate in the media's
coverage of Islam.

Thus, any sympathy for Said's argument requires accepting the premise
that all knowledge is partial, interpretive, and vulnerable to influence
from powerful institutions. Said rejects traditional theories of knowledge
which intend/pretend to furnish objective truths and a non-political aware¬
ness and which offer a discovered rather than a created "correct" point of
view. Such concepts of knowledge make invisible the operation of political
interest and will to power factors which still shadow "objectivity" despite
advances in interpretive theory and historiography. Said attempts to bring
this shadow play of forces into the light, not to inform us about what Islam
really is but to help us see how in many ways "Islam" stands as a concept
which functions to maintain Western cultural and political hegemony.

It is in the nature of what we call knowledge that the particular gives
way to the general, the different to the same. In Western and specifically
U.S. views of the Islamic world, historical consciousness surrenders to "a

small number of unchanging characteristics. . .still mired in religion, primi-
tivity, and backwardness." (p. 10) In the first of the book's three parts.
Said focuses on how choices and interpretations of fact concerning the
Islamic world are shaped within the context of a dominant Western viewpoint.
Early, Said tells us

It is only a slight overstatement to say that Muslims and Arabs are
essentially covered, discussed, apprehended, either as oil suppliers
or as potential terrorists. Very little of the detail, the human
density, the passion of Arab-Muslim life has entered the awareness of
even those people whose profession it is to report the Islamic world.

(p. 26)

Said discusses the historical and ideological conditions shaping common
perjorative images of Islam. Most prominently, the United States lacks a
colonial past, as France and England had. Thus, the U.S.' historical aware¬
ness of Islam is limited to a period of post-World War II, U.S. international
economic hegemony. Without an historical awareness of Islam, the suddenness
and immediacy of recent challenges to North American hegemony in the Islamic
world have overwhelmed any real capacity here for reflective, non-ideologi-
cal thinking. As Said tells us

Representations of Islam have regularly testified to a penchant for
dividing the world into pro- and anti-American (or pro- and anti¬
communist), an unwillingness to report political processes, an imposi¬
tion of patterns and values that are ethnocentric or irrelevant or
both, pure misinformation, repetition, an avoidance of detail, an
absence of genuine perspective... The result is that we have redivided
the world into Orient and Occident— the old Orientalist thesis pretty
much unchanged— the better to blind ourselves not only to the world
but to ourselves and to what our relationship to the so-called Third
World has really been. (p. 40)

Said discusses how the media rely on "experts"— in particular, scholars
and government officials— to form this image of "Islam." In the second part
of the book. Said analyzes in detail coverage of Iran during the overthrow
of the Pahlavi regime and the following "hostage crisis." In part, the
media's reliance on a predominantly Western political viewpoint derives from
an image of Islam created by Western scholars implicitly (i.e., historically)
tied to government policymaking, as those supported by the Pahlavi Foundation
which finances Iranian studies in U.S. universities. Furthermore, the media
demonstrate little concern about a reporter's experience in assigning cover¬
age of Iranian issues. Rather they have an excessive concern with the drama¬
tic and hence confrontational aspects of international affairs. The media
function to cement a malevolent, ahistorical image of another people and cul¬
ture. And overarching all the institutional factors, an unrecognized ideo¬
logical coimi tment to Western capitalism and its modes of thought and per¬
ception determines the boundaries in perspective "beyond which a reporter or
commentator does not feel it necessary to go." (p. 50) Covering Islam pre¬
sents a series of examples:

All the major television commentators, Walter Cronkite. . .and Frank
Reynolds. . .chief among them, spoke regularly of "Muslim hatred of this
coi/ntry" or more poetically of "the crescent of crisis, a cyclone hurt¬
ling across a prairie" (Reynolds, ABC, November 21); on another occa¬
sion (December 7) Reynolds voiced-over a picture of crowds chanting
"God is great" with what he supposed was the crowd's true intention:
"hatred of America." Later in the same program we were informed that
the Prophet Mohammed was "a self-proclaimed prophet"... and then re¬
minded that "Ayatollah" is "a self-styled twentieth-century title"
meaning "reflection of God" (unfortunately, neither i-s completely
accurate). The ABC short (three-minute) course in Islam was held in
place with small titles to the right of the picture, and these told

the same unpleasant story of how resentment, suspicion, and contempt
were a proper response to "Islam"; Mohammedanism, Mecca, purdah,
chador, Sunni, Shi'ite (accompanied by a picture of men beating them¬
selves), mullah. Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran. Immediately after these
images the program switched to Jamesville, Wisconsin, whose admirably
wholesome schoolchildren--no purdah, self-flagellation, or mullahs
among them--were organizing a patriotic "Unity Day." (pp. 78-9)

Working on a theoretical level, as well. Said makes some methodological
suggestions about how to pinpoint interrelationships between power and the
generation of knowledge. Borrowing from Raymond Williams, Said recognizes
that the creation of knowledge and images does not result from a monolithic,
wholly determining (usually simplistically derived) ideology. He analyzes
how ideological consensus is formed by powerful institutions (government,
universities, media), and how that consensus "sets limits and maintains
pressures" (p. 49) on the individuals and groups who produce conceptions
about the rest of the world, and by extension, on ourselves. As Said tells
us.

When the American hostages were seized and held in Teheran, the con¬
sensus immediately came into play, decreeing more or less that only
what took place concerning the hostages was important about Iran; the
rest of the country, its political processes, its daily life, its per¬
sonalities, its geography and history, were eminently ignorable: Iran
and the Iranian people were defined in terms of whether they were for
or against the United States, (p. 50)

There is no conspiracy operating in Said's book. But neither does he
provide a detailed analysis of the hegemonic process as it operates through
the functioning of particular individuals, government agencies, and media
corporations. Despite a wealth of evidence to support his point of view.

Said hasn't analyzed how those ideas that compete with the dominant image of
Islam become negated through the very real media processes. These processes
include hierarchical decision-making, cortCentration of media ownership,
broadcast regulation, economic constraints of news coverage, demands of
space (newspapers and magazines) and time (television and radio), processes
of hiring and firing personnel, and many other specifics covered in books
like Edward J. Epstein's News From Nowhere. Said recognizes that some
coverage is better than others but he doesn't explain how the more intelli¬
gent reportage has a negligible effect, even if he explains to some extent
why we get so little good coverage. The book is more adept at this kind of
detailed analysis and explanation when it treats academic institutions, but
it presents the media as an homogenous entity with little or no deviation
from the ideological norms outlined in the book.

Most valuable in Covering Islam is probably its last section, titled
"Knowledge and Power." In it. Said advances a more coherent use of his evi¬
dence to demonstrate the often ignored association between government policy¬
making and academia in their continual reification of Western political
hegemony. This association is especially pronounced in academic work on
the Middle East. For not only do scholars write about Islam as a threat to
Western civil ization--a view held in concert with the governemnt and the
media— but the scholars themselves deny political partisanship. Said ana¬
lyzes four Princeton University seminars on the Middle East funded by the

JUMP CUT NO. 28

Ford Foundation in a way that refutes the scholars' own self-concept of
being "apolitical":

In the choice of over-all topics and trends the four seminars under¬
took to shape awareness of Islam in terms that either distanced it as
a hostile phenomenon or highlighted certain aspects of it that could
be "managed" in policy terms, (p. 140)

Scholars' methodolgical naivete compounds the institutional factors.
Orientalism still considers itself to be producing objective knowledge about
the Islamic world, "blithely ignoring every major advance in interpretative
theory since Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud." (p. 140) In fact. Middle East
scholars rarely ask methodological questions, in particular, questions con¬
cerning who profits (and I mean this literally) from the knowledge produced.
As Said says.

The obliteration of the methodological consciousness is absolutely
coterminous with the presence of the market (governments, corporations,
foundations): one simply does not ask why one does what he does if
there is an appreciative, or at least a potentially receptive, clien¬
tele. ..the overall interpretative bankrupty of most. . .writing on
Islam can be traced to the old-boy corporation-government-university
network dominating the whole enterprise, (pp. 141, 144)

Fortunately, Said sees some hope in an "antithetical knowledge" being
produced by younger scholars and non-experts. It is in his praise of their
work that we can begin to discern what represents, for Said, knowledge "in
the service of coexistence and community" (p. 153) rather than in the ser¬
vice of domination. Although Said offers no strict methodological program
for the production of truly humanistic knowledge, he does suggest an atti-
tudinal stance proper to such an enterprise. For Said, "knowledge is
essentially an actively sought out and contested thing, not merely a passive
recitation of facts and 'accepted' views." (p. 152) As such, the cultural
critic must stand in opposition to the liberal democratic institutions which
produce knowledge about ours and other cultures, and in sympathy with the
"object" under investigation. We need an academic stance highly aware of
the political consequences of scholarship.

Thus, to produce knowledge, especially about other cultures, means to
assert power, whether or not the scholar recognizes this. And in demon¬
strating this. Said has produced knowledge not only about Islam but about
ourselves. In a most powerful way, he has shown how our culture has denied,
ignored, and suppressed the ways it asserts power in and against a large
part of the rest of the world. Against Western scholarship which parades
in costumes of liberal objectivity and truth, Said's work unmasks the parti¬
sanship and political interest at work in our media and universities.

Covering Islam reveals once and for all that the emperor, our emperor, has
no clothes.

1. Death of a Princess was a British film in docu-drama form of the
well-known execution of a Saudi princess and her commoner lover presented
by PBS on May 12, 1980. The presentation of this film set off a small
international incident which is the subject of a short chapter in Covering
Islam.

Gov't Censors Pick Best Short

— Janine Verbinski

IF YOU LOVE THIS PLANET may be the first
academy award winner to be labeled political
propaganda by the U.S. Justice Dept, and forced
to cen+ain this ominous statement:

This material is prepared, edited, is- .
sued or circulated by The National Film
j Board of Canada, 16th Floor, 1251 Avenue
of the Americas, New York, New York
10020, which is registered with the
Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.,
under the Foreign Agents Registration
Act as an agent of Canada. Dissemination
reports on this film are filed with the
Department of Justice where the required
registration statement is available for
public inspection. Registration does
not indicate approval of the contents of
the material by the United States Govern¬
ment.

This act of censorship is certainly in keeping
with James Watt's blundering attempt to censor
the scheduled performance of the Beach Boys and
various recent acts of censorship of Public
Television.

Among the ironic sidelights of the IF YOU
LOVE THIS PLWiET incident are: the Justice
Dept.'s labeling Canada as a "foreign agent."
And they define a propaganda film as one that
would

influence a recipient or any section of
the public within the United States with
reference to the foreign country or a
foreign political party or with reference
to the foreign policies of the United
States. . .

Yet PLANET does not greatly differ from other
anti -nuke films currently distributed in the
U.S. For example, EIGHT MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT
is a portrait of Dr. Helen Caldicott, national
president of Physicians for Social Responsibil¬
ity, whose speech protesting the hazards of nu¬
clear warfare forms the text of DO YOU LOVE THIS
PLANET? (EIGHT MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT was funded
largely by the National Endowment for the Arts.)

When we consider the 17 films labeled polit¬
ical propaganda and subjected to the conditions
accompanying this label, including an obTigationi
on the part of the foreign agent to report the
name of each theater or group showing the film,
we better understand the seriousness of the in¬
cident. These films from Israel, Korea, West
Germany, Canada and South Africa include titles
such as Israel's PLIGHT OF SOVIET JEWRY: LET
MY PEOPLE GO and a West German production pro¬
moting business opportunities in West Berlin,
BERLIN MEANS BUSINESS AND MORE.

Various groups and organizations have de¬
nounced this crude government censorship. The
Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Variety,

The EFLA Bulletin and The ACLU News have print¬
ed articles denouncing the actions of the Jus¬
tice Department. The Canadian government has
asked the U.S. Justice Department to rescind
its actions against DO YOU LOVE THIS PLANET?
and two other Canadian films on acid rain. The
ACLU is filing a suit to overturn the Justice
Department's decision. Among the plaintiffs
are the Environmental Defense Fund, the State
of New York (who wants to show the film as part
of its education program on acid rain), the
New York Library Association, Mitchell Block,
head of Direct Cinema Ltd. (the U.S. distributor
of the film), the Environmental Task Force and
the Biograph Theater, Washington, D.C. Senator
Kennedy has requested that Senate Judiciary
Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond screen the
three films for member of the Senate and call
Attorney General William French Smith to account
for the decision.

The Hollywood industry expressed its displea¬
sure with the government's action by awarding
PLANET the Oscar. As the government intensi¬
fies its effort to keep information critical
of the administration's policies from the
American people, media makers must also inten¬
sify our efforts to inform and educate. A wide
dissemination of PLANET will add considerably
to this effort. ai

Puerto Rico’s Super-8 Festival

—Maria Christina Rodriguez

The film medium has been a source of fascina¬
tion for Third World countries, where technique
is given a godlike status and people are used to
being passive spectators. Although many realize
the importance of filmmaking as a tool to commu-
nicace with an immense number of people who oth¬
erwise would be unreachable, the economic factor
for would-be filmmakers has always been a stum¬
bling block. So Third World countries remain as
raw material for big studio productions from
capitalist countries. Even though Puerto Rico
has a particular relationship with the United
States, it remains within U.S. policy for un¬
derdeveloped countries, in which they can only
serve as settings for movies and as captive mar¬
kets. It is only recently--within the past ten
years— that these countries have discovered that
filmmaking does not have to mean big studios,
huge budgets, and unreachable cinematic tech¬
niques. The Super 8 film format, originally
devised as a toy for the American family, has
been rescued from that end to become a tool for
everyday people interested in conmunicating
through this medium. The Super 8mm format is on
its way to becoming a sophisticated communica¬
tion instrument within everybody's reach.

In October 1982, after individual competitions
in international Super 8mm festivals (Quebec,
Mexico, Venezuela, Portugal, and Brazil), a
group of moviemakers in San Juan, Taller de Cine
La Red, organized an encaentro (a getting to¬
gether) of Super 8mm films from Puerto Rico and
from other countries. Richard Clark, the direc¬
tor of the International S-8 Federation (in Mon¬
treal) brought a sample of the best internation¬
al works in this format from Belgium, Quebec,
and Brazil.

From Latin America, an excellent Mexican docu¬
mentary by Luis Lupone, QUE OIOS SE LO PAGUE,
traces the everyday chores of a pompous small¬
town priest; this documentary has a very strong
social criticism of the Catholic Church in Mexi¬
co. Without a doubt, the best international
Super 8mm animation film presented was Lewis
Cooper's THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JOE SOAP (Eng¬
land), an excellent and sophisticated use of
animated clay dolls. The film's antiwar message
comes out loud and clear for all ages, especial¬
ly since it was made during the British war in
the Falkland Islands.

Germin Carreffo, director of the Cinemateca

Nacional de Venezuela in Caracas, brought to the
encuejitro a sample of Venezuelan productions in
Super Bran. Venezuealans are using this format
as a way to protest everyday aggressions against
their communities, their environment, and their
existence: CARENERO by V. Rodrfguez denounces
the contamination of water that resulted in the
death of millions of fish in his town. CON-
TRAMINACKJN records the organization of another
community to protest the air pollution created
by industrial waste; using comedy and parody,
Carlos Castillo in TVO and HECHO EN VENEZUELA
portrays the consumerist impulse in bourgeois
Venezuel afL society .

From the USA, Nilo Manf redin was represented
by GAY IS OUT. This film began with the various
definitions of the words "gay" and "out" by
characters posing as various gay stereotypes,
only to arrive at no definition at all. This
subject proved to be controversial to many in
the Latin American audience. Kimberly Safford
and Fred Barney Taylor of NYC presented a seg¬
ment of LIVES OF THE ARTISTS. This work focused
on local artists presenting their work and them¬
selves. The Super 8nin format encourages their
spontaneity and creativity. Although this type
of art might be quite familiar to New Yorkers,

JUMP CUT NO. 28

it was not totally strange to the Puerto Rican
audience. Old San Juan (where the encuentco
took place) has its own sidewalk artists.

Puerto Rican filmmakers were able to present a
variety of their work for the first time to a
local audience that was generally unaware of the
Super 8 format. Poli Marichal presented her
animated films in which she experiments with
sounds, colors, and drawing, scratching on the
film itself. Douglas S^nche2, who now resides
in Mexico, presented two fiction films that par¬
ody social mores in Latin American countries:
FOTONOVELA and VIERNES SOCIAL. During a program

of S-8 for children, Ctfnavos presented -i stcry
with puppets, CON AMOR SE FENCE AL 0RAC:iT;i. Two
filmmakers presented their own versions of
childhood heroes: SUPERMAN by J. L. Mezo and
TARZAN by Waldo Srfnchez. A testimonial film
made collectively in a film workshop directed by
Carlos Malav^, MEMORIAS DE UN YAUCANO, records
the testiomony of a 110-year-old man who was a
witness to the 1896 North American troops land¬
ing in Puerto Rico. He sings and narrates how
the events of that time affected him--a young
black working man confronted by a foreign white
uniformed army. MAIZ by Waldo Sanchez traces
the origin and the cultivation of corn by crea¬

tively combining the historical and the pictur¬
esque.

Puerto Rico's Encuentro Nacional de Cine Su¬
per 8 has given us an excellent opportunity to
introduce this format to people interested in
filmmaking but who up to now were unaware of it.
Super 8 is undoubtedly an up-and-coming mediuim
for developing countries like Puerto Rico. (For
more information on the international Super 8
film scene, write to International S-8 Federa¬
tion, 9155 Rue St-Hubert, Montreal, Quebec, Ca¬
nada H2M 1Y8.)

Latinos and Public Broadcasting: The 2%

Factor

I — Jesfls Salvador TrevirTo

From the time that the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting (CPB) was created on 27 March 1968,
^ there has been little attention devoted to His¬
panic television programming in public broad¬
casting at the national level. Although Amer¬
ica's close to twenty million Hispanic Americans
yearly pay billions of dollars in taxes, part of
which go to fund public broadcasting, only about
2 percent of funds for television production
allocated by CPB in the past fourteen years have
gone to produce programs specifically geared to
the Hispanic communities of the United States.!
Even today there still exists no ongoing public
affairs, cultural affairs, or dramatic series
for Hispanic Americans.

The employment record within the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting with respect to Hispan-
ics is even more shameful. Despite a history of
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports
highlighting the lack of Hispanics employed at
CPB, at the present time there is only one staff
person at CPB who is considered Hispanic and
that individual is counted as half-Hispanic and
half-Native American!2

At a time when the national Hispanic popula¬
tion will soon become the largest ethnic minor¬
ity in the United States, these facts are out¬
rageous and shameful. They point to conditions
on which immediate action must be taken.

A HISTORY OF NEGLECT

It is true that in 1968 a short-lived drama
series, "Cancfon de la Raza" ("Song of the
People") was broadcast at many PBS stations
throughout the United States. But this series,
which raised expectations among Hispanic Ameri¬
cans of the potential for Public Broadcasting's
impact on Hispanic communities, was not funded
by CPB but rather by the Ford Foundation. From
its inception until the time it funded the first
national Hispanic series, "Realidades," in 1974,
CPB's only allocations for Hispanic productions
were minimal step-up funds for a handful of lo¬
cally produced shows which were later aired na¬
tionally.

Until "Realidades," the total of Hispanic pro¬
gramming at the national level was represented
by programs funded by the U.S. Department of
Health, Education and Welfare, programs often
geared to adolescent audiences such as "Villa
Alegre," "Carrascolendas," and "Mundo Real." -On
rare occasions, Hispanic themes and issues were
"mainstreamed" as part of regular news and pub¬
lic affairs series such as "NPACT," "The Advo¬
cates," or "Washington Week in Review." There
was no regular, ongoing, dramatic, cultural, or
documentary or— for that matter— news and public
affairs series for the Hispanic community.

"REALIDADES" AND "OYE WILLIE"

In 1974, television station WNET in New York
received a contract for $60,000 from the Corpor¬
ation for Public Broadcasting to produe a one-
hour pilot intended to serve the national His¬
panic American population: "Realidades." In the
next three years CPB spent $400,000 on what be¬
came Season One (1975-1976) and $553,902 on Sea¬
son Two (1976-1977) of the short-lived series.

A total of thirteen half-hour programs were pro¬
duced the first season and ten programs were
produced the second season. At the conclusion
of the second season, the series was offered to
the Station Program Cooperative (SPC) for con¬
tinued funding but was rejected. It was the end
of the series.

In the period of 1976 through 1979, CPB met
continued pressure for an ongoing series for
Hispanics by funding four producers to develop
pilot scripts for series production. Awards
totaling about $153,992 were given to Jos^ Luis
Rufz ("Bless Me Ultima"), Lou De Lemos ("Oye
Willie"), Jesds Trevino ("La Historia"), and
KERA-TV ("Centuries of Solitude"). An addition¬
al award was made in 1978 for pilot production
for the "Oye Willie" project. By November of
1979, three of the projects had developed pilot
scripts which had been refused further s'ipport
by CPB. Only "Oye Willie" remained on the draw¬
ing boards. A contingent of Hispanic producers
from throughout the nation were outraged. In
November of 1979 they addressed the board of CPB
calling attention to the fact that less than 1
percent' of its production funds for the years
1978-1979 had been spent in "stalling" the His¬
panic conmunity while at the same time rejecting
pilot scripts for production. In 1980 the "Oye
Willie" project recieved $1.7 million for pro¬
duction. It was to be the second and, to date.

only other national Hispanic series funded by
CPT in its fourteen-year history.

NO NATIONAL HISPANIC SERIES

Although efforts in 1981 have demonstrated the
Program Fund's willingness to fund more Hispanic
projects, there is still no stated or implied
commitment to fund a national ongoing Hispanic
drama series. The "Oye Willie" project, for
what appear valid reasons, has not been funded
for a second year, and other drama programs such
as "The True Story of Gregoria Cortez" and
"Segufn have both been subsumed or "main¬
streamed" into the "American Playouse" drama
series. Major documentaries such as "Island in
Crisis" and "La Tierra" have been mainstreamed
into the "Matters of Life and Death" anthology.

HISPANICS EXCLUDED FROM PANELS

One device advanced by the Program Fund of the
CPB to assure equitable participation of minori¬
ties in the decision-making process of awards to
producers has been the creation of advisory pan¬
els to CPB staff. Although the Program Fund's
advisory panels are seen by CPB staff as ". . .
structured to include minorities and women, "3 in
fact, scrutiny of the makeup of panels reveals
Hispanic participation as sporadic at best. No
Hispanics were invited to serve on the news and
public affairs panels, which awarded an approxi¬
mate total of $5.7 million to programs like the
"McNeil Lehrer Report," "World," "The Lawmak¬
ers," "Inside Story," and "Crisis to Crisis."

No Hispanic groups or individuals were recipi¬
ents of these funds either.

Similarly, the drama panel which awarded a
commitment of $7.5 million over a three-year
period to the "American Playhouse" drama series
included no Hispanics.

At this time it is uncertain to what extent
Hispanics had input into the decision to fund a
new $5 million documentary series or the extent
to which this series will employ, program, or
address Hispanics and Hispanic issues.

2 PERCENT OVER FOURTEEN YEARS

The following table reveals that despite a
good faith effort in the past two years on the

part of the Program Fund to rectify years of
neglect in Hispanic programming, the overall
percentage of production dollars devoted to His¬
panic projects remains shamefully low— only
about 2 percent of total CPB funds for televi¬
sion production over the past fourteen years has
gone to produce Hispanic programs.^

REPORTS AND STUDIES BUT NO ACTION

The deplorable situation with respect to His¬
panics outlined in this background is not new to
either CPB board or staff. Over the years many
reports and studies have been issued outlining
the concerns herein expressed. The most impres¬
sive of these studies was a $200,000 report
which took two years to complete entitled, "A
Formula for Change." This report, published in
1978, carefully documents and outlines affirma¬
tive action which must be taken to rectify ineq¬
uitable conditions with respect to minorities
and to Hispanics. Yet, three years after the
"Formula for Change" report, how can there still
be only one Hispanic employed on the staff of
CPB? How can there still be no Hispanic series
on the air? And why are Hispanics still being
excluded from participation on key advisory pan¬
els of the Program Fund? What will it take to
bring about equity for Hispanics?

^The table compiled herein compares total funds
allocated by the Corporation for Public Broad¬
casting for television production with funds
allocated for Hispanic television production.

^As reported by CPB President Edward Pfister and
CPB Board Vice Chairman Jose Rivera before an
assembly of Asian, Hispanic, and black produc¬
ers in Los Angeles on 11 December 1981.

^Report by President Edward Pfister to CPB
board, January 1982.

^This table was prepared from information con¬
tained in the annual reports of the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting years 1968-1981 inclu¬
sive and from other public information on His¬
panic projects funded during these years. The
table does not address distribution funds in
which Hispanics have also been slighted to a
degree similar to that in production.

HISPANIC FUNDING

CPT Funds for

Funds Allocated for

Percentage of

Year

TV Production

Hispanic Programs

Nane of Project

Total Funds

1968-1969

$ 1,686,162

—

1970

4,897,073

—

1971

9,402,032

—

1972

15,308,659

—

1973

16,131,487

—

1974

17,124,721

$ 60,000

Realidades

1975

17,444,367

400,000

Real 1 dades

2.3%

1976

14,849,073

553,902

Realidades

3.7%

1977

14,350,832

56,576

La Historia

45,467

Bless Me Ultima

21,929

Oye Willie

30.000

Centuries of Solitude

$ 153,972

1.1%

1978

19,405,381

249,658

Oye Willie

1.3%

1979

15,933,776

56,658

Bilingual TV

.A%

1980

21,568,895

1,700,000

Oye Willie

7.S%

540,000

Gregorio Cortez

63,740

Nicaragua

80,000

Segufn

7,175

Choi a

4,700

Rosa Linda

73,000

End of the Race

84,500

Island In Crisis

55,342

La Tierra

39,976

El Salvador/Vietnam

6,500

El Salvador/Update

1,400

WETA Translations/Reagan

3.450

Mundo Real

1981

$ 25.287.000

$ 949.783

3.8%

TOTALS

$ 193,389,467

$4,133,348

2.1%

JUMP CUT NO. 28

BIRTH OF A NATION, GONE WITH THE WIND
THE GREENSBORO MASSACRE

Racism j History and
Mass Media

tilHTH UF A NATION: The Klacn 'kiZ'La the black militia in Piedmont in the Reconstruction (left)
The Klan's triumphant march with Lillian Gish and Miriam Cooper at its head (right).

- - - -

ij; :» i

k-' '

— Mark I. Pinsky

In the first three-fourths of the 20th century
the nation viewed the South much as that region
saw itself -- through the prism of Hollywood.

Epic movies have always created powerful myths,
but few have done the kind of lasting damage accom¬
plished by D.W. Griffith's BIRTH OF A NATION and
David O.Selznick's GONE WITH THE WIND.

Generations of U.S. citizens have had etched
into their consciousness an image of the heroic
Klansman on horseback rescuing the flower
of Southern womanhood from the clutches of the
leering black villain. The pivotal period of
Southern history known as Reconstruction has
been similarly portrayed with its stereo¬
types of sleazy, opportunistic carpetbaggers
and traitorous scalawags. There is no way
to calculate the impact of a single sequence
from BIRTH OF A NATION showing black state
legislators in the South sitting eating
chicken in the legislative chambers with
their feet up on desks.

Yet these images did not just spring from the
filmmakers' imagination, but were provoked as well
by the post-Civil War press, for political reasons.
Later, such notions were reinforced by conservative
white historians and taught as gospel in segregated
classrooms.

A group of younger historians have offered
a more accurate view of the Klan and Reconstuc-
tion. They argue that the Reconstruction was
a very hopeful period of U.S. history. It
included some of the most innovative attempts
at fundamental land reform, economic coopera¬
tives for marketing, universal male sufferage,
bi racial political coalitions based on class,
the building of a genuine two-party electoral
system, free public education, and expanded
health care. The experiment was flawed by
paternalism of administration and corruption,
petty and grand. In the latter case. Northern
railroads, determined to buy their way through
the South, impartially corrupted whomever was in
control of the legislatures of the time, black
or white, radical Republican or redeemer Democrat.
Ultimately the experiment of the Reconstruction
was sold out by national Republicans in the
compromise of 1877.

The Ku Klux Klan became the shock troops
used by conservative "Tory" or "Bourbon" Southern
Democrats to crush Reconstruction and reassert
their economic domination. Their ideology was
race-based and their main tactic violence against
the unarmed. Destructively the Klan acted against
the outnumbered and unarmed, by night and by am¬
bush " not against rapaciaous armed men, as depic¬
ted in BIRTH OF A NATION. As Dr. Allen Trelease,
professor of history at the University of NC at
Greensboro and author of the definitive study.

White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and
Southern Reconstruction, put it -- there was not
a single incident in all of his research where
he could find Klansmen parti cpating in any
confrontation which might be loosely be described
as a "fair fight."

In spite of their technical genius and
grandeur, BIRTH OF A NATION and GONE WITH THE
WIND obliterated the fact that racial coopera¬

tion has once been attempted and enjoyed some
fleeting and scattered successes in the South
during Reconstruction. Such an obliteration
of history diminished the likelihood that
any similar attempts might be made in the
future. The combination of Klan and the monied
class were a winning combination in the South,
which thwarted the hopeful Populist movement
of the 1890s, the post World War I black
renaissance and resurgence of the early 1920s
and the New Deal and CIO union drives in the
South, known as Operation Dixie, in the 1930s
and 40s. By the time of the civil rights
movement of the 60s, working class whites were
so accustomed to being manipulated into a
violent reaction to any impulse toward racial,
economic, political, or social equality that
they acted almost reflexively, without the
need for any cue or leadership from above.

A tradition had already been well established.

Ku Klux Klan" which formed the basis for BIRTH
OF A NATION. Today 10% of the estimated 10,000
•Klan members live in North Carolina. On July 9,
1979, members and supporters of the Comnunist
Workers Party (CWP), a Maoist organization active
in organizing textile workers in NC mills, showed
up in the small town of China Grove, some carrying
guns and wooden staves to protest a benefit
showing of BIRTH OF A NATION. Taunts and fighting
occurred but no shots were fired. This began a
series of events that would lead to the members
of the CWP being killed in the Greensboro Massacre.

In fact, BIRTH OF A NATION has been used as
a recruiting film for the Klan for years, and had
a' material role to play in the Klan's growth.

In his book, Hollywood: The Pioneers. (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), Kevin Brownlow describes
this relation between film and social structures
at length. Following is a lengthy quote from
that book:

GONE WITH THE WIND: Note haw the composition and gesture reflect ideological notions about the
"just order" between the races, and the aormections made beiween morality and subservianoe.

THE CLANSMAN, THE KLAN, AND BIRTH OF A NATION

North Carolina has played an unique role
in the history and development of the Ku Klux
Klan in the South. Thomas Dixon, a North
Carol i nan wrote the novel The Clansman, a racist
classic subtitled "an historic romance of the

Compared to Dixon's original, Griffith's
racism was mild. The Clansman read like a tract
from the Third Reich: "...for a thick-lipped,
flat-nosed, spindle-shanked Negro, exuding his
nauseous animal odor, to shout in derision over
the hearths and homes of white men and women is

JUMP CUT NO . 28

an atrocity too monstrous for belief." Griffith
used none of this. Yet what remained was still
alarming. . .

AUDONOUU

-oiiw-

...The mayor of New York^.ordered the License
Commissioner to cut some of'^the most offensively
racist material. No one will ever know what the
material contained, but Francis Hackett in
Neu) Republic supplied a clue: "The drama winds up
with a suggestion of Lincoln's solution — back
to Liberia -- and then, if you please, with a film
representing Jesus Christ in the halls of brotherly
love." About 500 feet were lost -- although
many cuts were the result of Griffith's attention
to audience response _

Rev. Thomas Dixon, according to his biography,
conducted his own campaign among the powerful
of the land. He showed BIRTH OF A NATION to the
President. "It is like writing history with
lightning," quoted Woodrow Wilson, whose
enthusiasm won Dixon a meeting with the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court, Edward White.

White was an intimidating man, and Dixon lureJ
him to see the film by telling him of the
President's reactions.

"You tell the true story of the Klan?"
asked White.

"Yes " for the first time."

"He leaned toward me and said in ’,ow,
tense tones: 'I was a member of the Klin,
sir. Through many a dark night I walkad
my sentinal's beat through the ugliest
streets of New Orleans with a rifle on my
shoulder. You've told the true story of
that uprising of outraged manhood?"'

"In a way I'm sure you'll approve."

"I'll be there," he firmly announced.'

With evidence that the President and the
Chief Justice approved of the film, the NAACP
found suppressing it extremely difficult.

However, it was banned for ten years in Kansas
..and in Chicago, Newark, Atlantic City, and

St. Louis _ The most depressing fact to

emerge from the tumult was the revival of the
Ku Klux Klan. This organization, which Griffith
himself admitted had spilt more blood than at
Gettysburg, had disbanded in 1869. The modern
Klan began its clandestine cruel ity on Thanks¬
giving night, 1915, on Stone Mountain in Atlanta,
where in June, 25,000 former Klansmen had
marched down Peachtree Avenue to celebrate
the opening of the film.... The film provided
the Klan with the finest possible publicity for
its revival in 1915. The similarity
between these two advertisements (reproduced
here) is self-evident. The organization was
to have been called the Clansmen. But whereas
the film used a few hundred extras but made
claims to 18,000, the membership in the Klan
multiplied alarmingly. By the mid 20s it
reached 4 million, and they could stage
rallies and marches that were not outdone
for sheer scale until November.

M Ilf Wart C«ii.Ti

I’nlmUgg^ iMiMHm MsliHi

18,000

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I ytrtHav Wr

rtCXOCfh

These tuo photos are from Hollywood: The
Pioneer Years.

•THE MHTH Of « MIMT COS

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graphic and acoustic evidence on a substantive
basis.

In Greensboro prosecutor Rick Greeson
wanted the all-white jury to view a 16mm film as
an illustration of the testimony of George
Vaughan of WGHP-TV in High Point, NC, the camera
man who shot it. "At some point someone
was screaming my name and yelling, "Get
down. Duck," George Vaughan testified.

"I don't know why I did it -- I just kept
shooting," he said. The only gap in his
observation ws the moment when the eyepiece
of his camera was knocked away from his face.

THE CLANSMAN poster

His 2H minute film, punctuated by the sound
of gunshots and screaming, showed the incident
in frightening detail. The jury displayed
little emotion during the showing and later,
when they were shown color photos made from
the film. They were allowed to observe only
the pictures which depicted what George
Vaughan could specifically remember seeing.

For legal and financial reasons the new
production company. Parallax Film Productions,
decided not to request footage taken by local
area tv stations, except the sequences used
in court that became part of the public record.
Instead the directors chose to take a biograph¬
ical approach, letting spouses, friends, and
co-workers speak of those murdered. Those inter¬
views with textile workers, white and black,
recalling the three victims who were organ¬
izing unions at various mills were exceptionally
moving and powerful, as well as were the testi¬
monies of clinic patients who had been treated
the victims who were physicians, usually for
free.

Brown low

Earlier in the day, a former reporter with
another local station, Laura Blumenthal, then
with WXII-TV in Winston-Salem, NC, completed
her testimony on the shooting, in which her
camera-person, David Dalton, sustained wounds
from a shotgun blast while filming from beneath
the station's bullet-ridden car.

VIDEO AS THE COURT'S STAR WITNESS

When the members of the CWP clashed
with the Klan in China Grove in July 79,
BIRTH OF A NATION was scheduled to be shown
at a local community center. The film was
never shown and in the course of a shouting
and shoving match between the two groups,
a Confederate flag was siezed from the Klans
men and burned.

Defense attornies say that their major problem
with videotape in juristictions where the
tapes provide substantive rather than merely
"illustrative" evidence is that the tape's
impact cannot be diminished through cross-
examination. There are also questions of
technical enhancement and even manipulation
of such tape. And there are other questions:

Can the tape be shown to jurors more than one
time, and in slow motion, stop action or instant
replay? Should each juror watch on a separate
monitor. Can an enlarged screen be used?

As a result, the jurors watched all four
sets of film at least six times — at regular
spped, slow motion and stop action, with sound
and silent, as well as with the commentary
and testimony of the camera operators. Six con¬
soles were set up around the chamber and the
lights were dimmed. (Reported plans from the
Justice Department to construct some kind of
hologram from the film had to be scrapped when
too many blind spots developed. Two of the
cameramen were standing together and one was
wounded while shooting.)

Despite the extraordinary amount of photo¬
graphs and ballistic and eyewitness testimony,
each of the six defendents was acquitted by the
all-white jury that heard the case. Remaining
charges against the other Klansmen and Nazis
were subsequently dropped by the Guilford
County district attorney.

The film has a number of shortcomings.

THE GREENSBORO MASSACRE still contains too
many sequences with CWP Chairman Jerry Tung
and Central Committee member Phil Thompson
walking around New York City and Northern
New Jersey discussing the state of the US
econon\y and the impending collapse or
capitalism. There area also a few heavy-
handed tricks, like cutting from a hog pen
at feeding time to a sppeded up sequence on the
floor of the NY Stock Exchange.

The film does provide a valuable insight
into the lives of those who died. Each was
extraordinary, and their biography demonstates
the best a generation has to offer and contri¬
bute. Male and female, black and white and
hispanic, Jew and Gentile, mid 20s to early
40s, parents of babies and teenagers, they
all traveled to different roads that day.

For director Sally Alvarez, a close friend and
comrade of those who were shot down, the
killings were a traumatic event which brought
her back to NC from NJ, and back to filmmaking.
She had originally studied video at the School of
Radio, Motion Pictures, and Television at the
University of North Carolina.

Stung by what all sides considered a humil¬
iating defeat at the hands of the CWP, the Klans¬
men and Nazis vowed that the outcome would not
be repeated. On Nov. 3, 1979, a motorcade of
Klansmen and Nazis drove into the staging area
of a CWP-sponsored "Death to the Klan" rally in
front of a public housing project in a predomi¬
nantly black section of Greensboro, NC. The
Klansmen rolled down their windows and shouted
racial epithets and taunts. Several of the
demonstrators began beating on one of the
vehicles with sticks which had been gathered
to carry placards.

The motorcade stopped, several Klansmen climbed
out of their vehicles and fired shots into
the air, followed by a similar action on
the part of the demonstrators. As the
crowd scattered and a stick-and-fist fight
ensued, a group of Klansmen and Nazis walked
to the rear of one of their cars, unlocked
the trunk, passed out rifles and pistols, and
began methodically, almost leisurely, to
mow down the leadership of the Communist
Workers Party. In the space of 88 seconds,
four lay dead, one (lying, and a sixth criti¬
cally tgfounded.

All of this was captured by four cameramen,
three using video tape and a fourth with 16nin
film. Before that sunny Saturday was out, local
and national tv news outlets were broadcasting
hastily edited versions of what later became
known as The Greensboro Massacre. In NC, unlike
in most states, still photos and films of
alleged crimes cannot be admitted as "substan¬
tive evidence" in court. They can only be
used to illustrate the photographer's or
camera operator's testimony. If the witness
is unable to reacall independently a person
or series of events which appears on the film,
the jurors may not consider it and, in the
case of a photo, may not even examine it.

This unwieldy and really unworkable situation
was resolved midway through the first degree
murder trial of six Klansmen and Nazis when
a package deal was struck by the defense and
prosecution permitting the admission of photo-

"I can remember when I was a teaching
assistant at film school," Alvarez recalls,
"showing students BIRTH OF A NATION over
and over again. Everybody talked about the
technique. But nobody said anything about
the politics."

In the course of the Greensboro Trial,
a showing of BIRTH OF A NATION, scheduled
for the local branch of the University of NC,
was cancelled after 30 black students appeared
with signs to demonstrate.

DOCUMENTARY FILM: THE GREENSBORO MASSACRE

Since Mark Pinsky wrote this article, the
film's title has been changed to RED NOVEMBER-
BLACK NOVEMBER. Reelworks, Inc. distributes
the film from 39 Bowery, Box 568, New York, NY
10002. .

Sally Alvarez and Carolyn Jung produ-
duced and directed an 88-minute 16mm film
on the Greensboro Massacre, with a budget of
about $30,000 and the sponsorship of the Comnuni
St Workers Party. New Liberty Films in
Philadelphia provided camera, editing, and
production assistance.

If we start from the conception of the symbol¬
ic discourse and mental reflection in art, lan¬
guage, and experience as social and mediated,
rather than individual, practices, then it fol¬
lows that artists who do communicative work in
society— alongside journalists — must be con¬
cerned with First Amendment issues, the Freedom
of Information Act, and the government's circu¬
lation of information. Fundamental to expres¬
sion is open access to past, present, and future

The physical seiise of the documents in the in
stallation is like dirty laundry in a closet.

they have the sense of an autopsy— black and
red— and they 're physically imposing and oppres
sive so you have to squeeze around them in the
small room. You can see through the words of one
document to another, to the video screens, and
hide and spy on people around you. The filmy,
black screens of negative, film which hang from

the ceiling are like huge carbon papers sprung

out of dossiers and drawers inco the open. They
are shiny and reflect the video monitors and peo
pie like fun house mirrors, swaying when you rub
against them. They act as metaphors for the in
terlocking layers of fictions, slanders and

propaganda; for the orders of meaning and the
meaninglessness of contradictory information con
veyed in conflicting, overlapping structures in
society." — Margia Kramer

JEAN SEBERQ
THE FBI
THE'MEDIA

by Margia Kramer

information and our determination of its histor¬
ical interpretation. This history reclamation
project has been primarily a feminist. Third
World, and left issue.

TRENDS TOWARD INFORMATION CONTROL

Soft- and hard-core secrecy and the withhold¬
ing of information by government and business
are weapons to manipulate communication and ways
of preempting interpretation, meaning, and dis¬
course. The trend in our country is toward in¬
formation control--anticipatory, illegitimate
classification of materials relating to health,
safety, crime prevention, and everyday life, as
well as "national security"— stored in central¬
ized, electronic data banks.

OUR REGULAR DIET OF "JUNK FOOD INFORMATION"

We live in a "junk food information world,. sub¬
sisting on a debased diet. The staggering amount
of data we encounter tends to destroy and neu¬
tralize any sense of meaning. In the mass media,
a hyperreal, staged and simulated content and
form are broadcast, in which differences are
homogenized to facilitate commodity production
and consumption. This extinguishes any sense of
reality, dominates the sphere of social commu¬
nications and introduces a kind of "entropy of
communications."

THE COMMODIFICATION OF CULTURE

We live in a society where the culture indus¬
try subordinates culture to the demands of capi¬
tal profits, masking the capitalist formation of
political, social, and psychological functions.
This commodification of culture degrades activ¬
ity in the public sphere as culture no longer
expresses human hope or the "unnatural" view¬
point but ratifies the alienation of individu¬
als, the fetishism of consumer society, and the
exploitation of labor for commodity production.
Individual subjectivities are "collapsed" into
the legitimated, ideosymbolic objects, images,
and structures of multinational oligopolies,
their interlocking directorates, and government.

A culture that belongs to us should be as di¬
verse as ourselves and return to us the oppor¬
tunity for reflection, leading to discourse
about our real lives and condition.

Artists, as noninstrumental controllers of the
production, distribution, and interpretation of
culture, constitute one of many minority groups
within society. However, artists are potential¬
ly more powerful than other groups or individu¬
als because their materials are consciousness
and communication. Artists gain immeasurably by
organizing and collaborating, enabling us to
initiate actions by developing an advocacy cul¬
ture rather than by responding as adversaries to
existing programs. The mass media tailor stor¬
ies and information 'to fit the context and for¬
mat of the media "sandwich": news/entertain¬
ment/advertising (which, ironically, often re¬
mains our source for "true" information). Re¬
versing this, artists can create new contexts
for information and can confront the "collapse
of meaning" by forming epistemologies, rather
than by following given structures of knowledge
and meaning.

JEAN SEBERG'S SUBJECT/IDEOLOGY IN THE
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SPHERES

THE "COLLAPSE OF MEANING"

The causes of the "collapse of meaning" in
modern life are various: the lack of critical
analysis in an atomized society with a homogen¬
ized culture; the social surveillance of meaning
in the media by the government and by business,
whose goal is to keep the mass audience in a t
state of continual "reception"; the industriali¬
zation and commodification of life; the control
of information and desire by means of obfusca¬
tion; the expansion of technological domination
within the "free market"; the gap between exper¬
ience and communication.

THE SPLIT BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY
WORKING AGAINST CULTURAL, SOCIAL, AND
POLITICAL PRODUCTION AND FOR STARDOM

American socieety was founded on the ideals of
individuality, personal lihe'"ty, and the pursuit

JUMP CUT NO. 28

of happiness, which took the form of wealth,
personal advancement, and power. Ironically,
since the eighteenth century, while the majority
of the population has gained representation,
enfranchisement, and-apparent political freedom,
it actually suffers decreasing liberty through
ecological impoverishment, hazardous environ¬
ments, routinized labor, subordination to tech¬
nology, and socially induced, internalized mech¬
anisms for individual self-control. The found¬
ing myth of universal, personal freedom is con¬
tradicted by the total precision, bureaucratic
homogeneity, and inexorable rationality instru¬
mental to progress, expansion, and domination.

In any society where the production and consump¬
tion of surplus cotimodities by individuals in
isolation are the primary activities, the capac¬
ities for generating meaning and action atrophy.
The public sphere is reduced to a system for the
distribution of neutral opinions and contingent
relatonships. Excessive isolation of individu¬
als, a by-product of the extreme individualism
of capitalism, leads to a gap between experience
and communication which divorces people from
communal life. This encoded alienation works ,
against linking cultural production to social
and political production. Hence, the opposition
of activist art to the pernicious and egregious
aspects of unmodified individualism, as commodi¬
fied in stardom.

ARTISTS CONFRONTING THE "COLLAPSE OF MEANING"

Cover from the booklet that accompanied Margia
Kramer's documentary video installation. Museum
of Modern Art, New York, September-October 1981.

Jean Sgberg (1938-1979) was a prominent enter¬
tainment figure here and in France who contrib¬
uted money to the Black Panther Party in the
late 1960s. The FBI targeted her as a "sex per¬
vert" and a dissident and, through their coun¬
terintelligence program (COINTELPRO) , sought to
"tarnish her image with the public." In May
1970, the Los Angeles FBI office was authorized
to plant a false letter with a gossip columnist;
the letter stated that Seberg (then pregnant)
had confided to the letter writer that the fa¬
ther of her child was a member of the Black Pan¬
ther Party. The "story" ran in the los Angeles
Times and later in Newsweek. Seberg saw the
story, went into premature labor, and the baby
died shortly after delivery. According to her
second husband, Seberg's paranoia, despair, and
suicide followed her surveillance and victimiza¬
tion by the FBI. Seberg's tragic life included
an unusual commerical and avant-garde film ca¬
reer from 1956 to 1979, in which she played a
range of roles which reflected the socialization
patterns of women during that time. Her person¬
al and professional life tells an important
story about relations between individuals, the
mass media, government repression, civil liber¬
ties, and political dissent. Unlike other Hol¬
lywood suicides— notably Judy Garland and Mari¬
lyn Monroe— in Jean Seberg's private life,
films, and political victimizaton, the personal
really becomes the political.

One month after Seberg committed suicide in
Paris, New Y(yrk artist-activist Margia Kramer
petitioned the FBI for the actress's files under
the Freedom of Information Act. The result was
a series of exhibitions, film screenings, books,
and a videotape constituting an extended biogra¬
phy of Seberg called "Secret." Materials used
in recent installations have included giant neg¬
ative photostat blow-ups on transparent film of
FBI documents on Seberg and the Black Panther
Party. The videotape contains manipulated se¬
quences of an ABC-TV documentary on Seberg and
her harassment by the FBI. It also includes
interviews with Seberg and her mother; a brief
history of her life and film roles; and some
sequences from the film BREATHLESS — such as Se¬
berg being followed/chased by a man in dark
glasses and, later, confessing to being preg¬
nant.

In the following photo/ text montage, jump cut
hopes to capture the essence of Margia Kramer's
work on Jean Seberg and the issue of information
control .

—The Editors

The message of the Jean Seberg story is multi-
leveled. The government entered her private
life, rescinding her civil liberties without
justification. In a deliberate way, the FBI
overlaid one false image of Jean Seberg, that of
a dangerous and immoral revolutionary, upon the
star image manufactured by Hollywood, that of
the provocative virgin whose sexual daring and
social nonconformity have tragic consequences.
Only by understanding and unmasking these codes
of contradictory meaning can the artist effec¬
tively demystify, derail, and combat the hege¬
monic social and political manipulation of in¬
formation and culture. Artistic expression op¬
posing repression and "collapse of meaning" is
severely hampered by visible and invisible ob¬
structions to information access, interpreta¬
tion, and circulation. The circulation of in¬
formation and the circulation of resistance,
dissent, and opposition are all imperiled by
current trends toward secrecy classification in
the name of "national security."

—Margia Kramer

ARTISTS DO COMMUNICATIVE WORK

'II-

JUMP CUT NO. 28

ctibns

^to si/bsJarir4fSJl/)^*c/)aTQ«

ism. Modernism itself became authoritarian with
an overriding faith in individual genius and
universal truth.

REAGONOMICS: WITHHOLDING INFORMATION AND
RESTRICTING ITS CIRCULATION

ART SINCE 1968 AND THE INEFFICACY OF MODERNISM

Modernism, as it emerged in the early nine¬
teenth century, was partly a reaction against
the tyranny of closed systems, specifically in
the form of political oppression. But its earl;
naturalism and the notion that art is the only '
revolutionary force to change life and to fully
liberate an inherently aesthetic world of the
future were transformed by its later subjectiv-

From 1956 to 1971 the FBI carried on an aggres¬
sive secret war against American citizens in the
name of "national interest," often without the
knowledge of Presidents or Attorneys General.

The extent of this illegal and covert defamation
of information and of civil liberties was largely
revealed by documents, such as the Jean Seberg
file, made available through the Freedom of In¬
formation Act. But this has done little to cur¬
tail the proliferation of such activities. Cur¬
rently, the Reagan administration is attempting
to construct a secret government in thrall to
monopoly business; to curtail once again civil
liberties and the "public interest" in the name
of "national security." Recently, three new Ex¬
ecutive Orders have been signed— on intelligence
operations and classification. Systematic at¬
tacks on the Freedom of Information Act, the
passage of the Intelligence Agents' Identities
Protection Act which prohibits citizens from pub¬
licly disclosing already declassified informa¬
tion, and the formation of the Subcommittee on
Security and Terrorism in the Senate (along with
the proposed House Internal Security Committee),
all contribute to forming a legitimate base for
the type of illegalities exposed in the aftermath
of the Vietnam War and Watergate.

Since 1968, however, it has become possible to
percieve and continue a different direction
based on the works of Walter Benjamin, Bertolt
Brecht, the Russian avant-garde, the documentary
movement, and the feminist movement. They dem¬
onstrated the need to work collectively and col-
laboratively in order to promote a symbolic dis¬
course, among specific audiences, which clari¬
fies moral and ethical views. In order to de¬
velop the critical faculties of these audiences,
and to raise the individual's critical con¬
sciousness of everyday life, artists/communica¬
tors in postmodern society must mix models from
high culture and mass culture, reflecting image-
s, forming strategies, and mapping routes from
the materials and technologies of contemporary
life. By developing art languages which deline¬
ate and encompass contemporary contradictions,
we attempt to examine our shared political, so¬
cial, and psychological environment so that re¬
flection can lead to real participation in the
self-government of pleasure and desire, so that
public and private spheres can interface in real
consensus. ■

Character Assassination

1 • San Francisco

NOTE

Jean Seberg has been a financial supporter of the
B||2^a^ should be neutralised, •• Her current pregnancy by

still married affords an opportunity for such
effort. The plan suggested by Los Angeles appears to have
serlt except for the timing since thw sensitive source
alght be compromised if Implemented prematurely. A copy is
designated to San Francisco since Its sensitive source
coverage Is Involved, ^

:97uwa i9p.

- me. •orxL^ rh.

uwitI

• ft) Ur^ y

The above is one of the FBI documents from Margia
Kramer's book which accompanied the installation.
The two photos are stills from her videotape.
According to Kramer, "The FBI was very coopera¬
tive in this case. I asked for the information
in October and got about 300 documents by Decem¬
ber— with massive deletions. I sent the docu¬
ments out to four experts on FBI material. They
would send them back to me and I would reproduce
their marginal comments exactly the way they ar¬
ranged them. It's real notation, not something
I made up. The black bars over the deleted words
convey their meaning almost subliminally. You
don't have to be able to read them. They act as
a barrier between you and information. They re*
leased information to show that Jean Seberg was
really in the wrong, that the father was black
and therefore she was bad. But what the infor¬
mation really does is indict the FBI for med¬
dling in her affairs, for example, taping phone
calls which they had no business taping in the
first place and naming her a "sex pervert."

She gave a total of $10,000 to the Black Panther
Party. The rest of her involvement is unclear.
There are telephone transcripts in which she says
she is doing some kind of trahsTation work in
Europe. The CIA obviously thought she was doing
a lot of things in Europe because they put her on
the Security Index and monitored her movements.
But whatever she was doing has remained complete¬
ly unknown, it's never been let out. If it's in
any of the documents it's been so deleted I can't
find it." ■

"Every time I see BREATHLESS it deconstructs more
and more. I keep seeing parallels to her life

and her political involvement, paranoia and per¬
secution." -- Margia Kramer

Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo in BREATHLESS,
still from the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Jean Seberg in JOAN OF ARC, still from MoMA.

"The character of Joan of Arc extends the tax¬
onomy of female types of the Eisenhower years,
from wife, mother and muse, to upstart and fire-
band; the self-defined woman who threatens es¬
tablished social conventions by mixing masculine
and feminine characteristics. This shift away
from the fifties atmosphere of peacetime afflu¬
ence and quiescent gender roles, during the Ken¬
nedy, Johnson and Nixon years, fixed Jean Seberg 's
mass culture archetype. Female daring and vir¬
ginal innocence counterpointed and predicted the
real events in which she participated: the civil
rights and anti-war movements. Jean Seberg 's
subject/ideology connotes outsider female vic¬
tim at the same time that it denotes insider
stardom. Constructed in contradictions, nega¬
tions and pseudo-events, her life and death are
like one of the many unresolved detective stor¬
ies in which she starred." -- Margia Kramer

Jean Seberg
An American

—Renee Shafrensky

The book jacket of played out, David Rich¬
ards's new book on the life of Jean Seberg, de¬
scribes her as "a Cinderella who didn't fit the
shoe in a kingdom of suspect princes." Like
Cinderella, Seberg was the stuff of fairytales,
but the end to her story was tragic. She was
found dead in September 1979 at the age of 40,
parked in her Renault in a wealthy section of
Paris with massive amounts of alcohol and bar¬
biturates in her bloodstream.

Seberg joined a long list of "burned out" fe¬
male stars who've suffered slow victimization,
emotional exhaustion, and eventual nervous col¬
lapse.

We've seen it before in the life stories of
Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland. The "American
Dream" gone sour again, played out — or was it
snuffed out? (At first they called it suicide,
but now they are wondering . . .) What went on
behind the screen to make this life so short?
Harassment, overt and covert.

Seberg was married three times and each of her
husbands became her director. The FBI wire¬
tapped conversations of her personal affairs
with members of the Black Panther Party. They
went so far as to plant a story in the press
citing the father of her second child as a black
activist. She was often betrayed and spied upon
by men.

Just as Garland came to represent the image of
the forties and Monroe the fifties, Seberg was a
sixties myth. Her life embodied the contradic¬
tions of that time.

First, there's her hair— a sexy, androgynous
boy-cut highlighting cheekbones and framing her
heart-shaped face in soft blonde— indicative of
the sexual ambiguity of the sixties.

Next, picture the opening sequence of Godard's
BREATHLESS (1959) with Seberg as an "innocent"
flirting with danger, adventure, and death.
Hawking the Herald Tribune in a T-shirt on the
boulevards, she is the quintessential "American
in Paris," an early American flowerchild.

The real story of Seberg 's life starts in Mar¬
shalltown, Iowa, population 19,000, where her
father was a pharmacist. After some acting in
high-school, she went off to do summer stock on
the Cape, then fell into the hands of Otto Prem¬
inger.

Dream?

As part of a huge publicity stunt to gain at¬
tention for his version of Shaw's SAINT JOAN,
Preminger conducted a nationwide talent hunt for
a young unknown to play Joan. Seberg found her¬
self on the Ed Sullivan show, introduced as the
girl who got the part. Beginning with SAINT
JOAN, Seberg made more than thirty-seven films
between 1957 and 1976. Despite bad reviews, she
continued working with Preminger and starred
with Deborah Kerr and David Njven in BON JOUR
TRISTESSE (1957). Based on a novel by Francoise
Sagan and filmed on the French Riviera, BONJOUR
. . . began Seberg 's mythic persona in France.
She played the part of the nihilistic daughter
of a wealthy American playboy, the first of many
roles that would capitalize on her as a "free
spirit." While filming, she met her first hus¬
band, Francois Moreuil.

Moreuil introduced Seberg to Jean-Luc Godard
and BREATHLESS followed. It was Godard's first
feature film— Seberg often chose to work with
unknown directors. Cast as a Bohemian expatri¬
ate, opposite the magnetic Jean-Paul Belmondo,
Seberg's mythic proportions began to fall into
place. As Mel Gussow of the Times put it, "she
became a symbol to the young American women who
dreamed about going to Paris to become Jean Se¬
berg."

After Moreuil directed her in PLAYTIME (1962),
their marriage ended. Remain Gary, a noted
French novelist and diplomat, became her second
husband in 1963. Seberg continued her career,
developing her skills as an actress in Robert
Rossen's LILITH (1964), with Warren Beatty and
Peter Fonda. She gave what was generally con¬
sidered as her best performance as the self-
possessed Lilith Arthur, a sensitive, borderline
psychotic whose pursuit of love (read: sexual¬
ity) is limitless and dangerous. Seberg was
frequently cast as a woman run by her emotions.
In Mervyn LeRoy's MOMENT TO MOMENT, made the
following year, she's a lonely woman on the
French Riviera who accidently shoots her lover
in a quarrel and pays a heavy psychological
price for it.

In 1968, at the height of the cultural upheav¬
al in America, Seberg returned to Hollywood.
There, like many other liberal celebrities of
the time, she became involved with social issues
and radical activists. But unlike most of them,
she became involved on a deep emotional level,
which led to an affair with Hakim Jamal, a mili¬
tant follower of Malcolm X.

In the same year, Gary directed her in BIRDS

Jean Seberg and Clint Eastwood in PAINT YOUR WAGON

JUMP CUT NO. 28

OF PERU, a film he also wrote and produced. It
was typical of the art films on sexual obsession
of the sixties. Seberg portrayed a nymphomaniac
tortured by her sado-masochistic husband. This
was the first film to receive an "X" rating un¬
der the new Motion Picture Association of Ameri¬
ca code.

From that point on, Seberg' s life was what
Dennis Berry, her last husband, called "an ob¬
jective paranoia": full of harassment, unsuc¬
cessful films, and affairs. In 1969, the FBI
ordered an "active discreet investigation to be
instituted on the American actress Jean Seberg
who is providing funds and assistance to black
extremists including leaders in the Black Pan¬
ther Party."

In 1974, Seberg managed to complete a short
called BALLAD OF A KID, directed, written by,
and starring herself. It was about the meeting
of two myths: the movie queen and the outlaw.
There are obvious parallels between the film and
her life.

Seberg blamed the premature birth and subse¬
quent death of her second child on the FBI sto¬
ry. Her husband Gary stated, "Jean became psy¬
chotic after that," and believed that the FBI
rumors had driven her to^uicide.

By the time of her death, Seberg was no longer
the cornbelt innocent Preminger had encountered.
She was a victim of a right-wing, moralistic
government, her public's need for mythology, and
her own emotional instability. Maybe this was
the payoff for going to France as a "free spir¬
it" and giving up on the American Dream.

Renee Shafrensky is a film critic for The Vil¬
lager and The Now York Rocker and a free-lance
producer . She is also the former director of
the Collective for Living Cinema in NYC. {■

"Let US call her Miss A, because she's the cur¬
rent "A" topic of chatter among the "ins" of in¬
ternational show business circles. She is beau¬
tiful and she is blonde.

Miss A came to Hollywood some years ago with
the tantalizing flavor of a basket of fresh-
picked berries. The critics picked at her act¬
ing debut, and in time, a handsome European
picked her for his wife. After they married.

Miss A lived in semi-retirement from the U.S.
movie scene. But recently she burst forth as the
star of a multi -mi 11 ion dollar musical.

"I had been in Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugo¬
slavia. I had experienced things in Eastern
Europe which I had read about but had never ac¬
tually concretely experienced: surveillance, the
bugging of my room and telephone, being followed.
I felt very "surveilled" and I felt very much the
political presence of repressive elements. I de¬
cided that when I returned to the US I would do
work that really pushed the limits of freedom—
so that I would experience how free I was, and
other people too." I returned to Paris, which was
my first step into the "free world" in about five
months. Jean Seberg died a couple of days after
I arrived in Paris. Her death was really a shock
to me. She was everybody's dream girl.

Still from MoMA.

Meanwhile, the outgoing Miss A was pursuing a
number of free-spirited causes, among them the
black revolution. She lived what she believed
which raised a few Establishment eyebrows. Not
because her escorts were often blacks, but be¬
cause they were black nationalists.

And now, according to all those really "in"
international sources. Topic A is the baby Miss
A is expecting, and its father. Papa's said to
be a rather prominent Black Panther."

--From a gossip column in the Los Angeles Times.

"The mass media reports stories to fit a pre¬
vailing format. Reversing this, the artist cre¬
ates the context to suit the story. An activist
artist's task is to produce and reproduce crit¬
ical consciousness in everyday life. It's a
critical way of dealing with information around
you. If yourgoal is revolutionary change and
if you unmask it, you can be a more conscious,
reflective, responsible person in the process
of your political and social actions. If you
real i ze the degree of repression and hegemony in
terms of censorship of iriformation--this is
what the piece is really about. We think we're
free and we live in a free, democratic society.
Yet we have to be aware of the limits that are
imposed on us as citizens. Looking at her films
and her career makes us aware how this affects
all of us." -- Margia Kramer

"You see her reconstructed through the FBI,
through the media, through her film roles,
through gossip columns, through her own sen¬
timental recollections about her hometown. All
these reconstructions stand along side each
other and contradict each other. She's lost
behind all that."

--Margia Kramer

JUMP CUT NO. 28

The Last Word

TERRY SANTANA

The death of Rosa Teresa "Terry" Santana
in New York last December under very suspi
cious circumstances dramatizes the govern¬
ment's current unleashing of spying and re¬
pression against the left.

Cuban-born Terry Santana was an activist
providing the New York press corps with up-
to-date information about El Salvador, pro¬
moting and distributing films from Central
America, including the feature-length DEC-
SION TO WIN, and exposing the connections
between the C.I.A., the DINA (Chile's secret
police), and exile-Cuban terrorist groups.

Santana's body was discovered December 4,
1982, by firemen responding to a fire in her
apartment. The door was blocked with furniture
and various small fires had been set. The
body was discovered scarcely burned, lying on
the floor. Officials conducted only a pre¬
liminary autopsy in spite of demands of
Santana's associates for a full investigation.

Within minutes of the firemen's arrival, the
F.B.I. and police arrived, took photographs,
and seized all the documents there. The New
York press reported it as a probable suicide
or accident, and tried to link Santana to a
Puerto Rican terrorist group, the FALN, which
she never associate with.

Santana's associates knew her to be in good
spirits and dismissed the suicide explanation.
Given the police and coroner's coverup, the
case looks like a probable political assasi-
nation.

Santana came to the United States from
Cuba as a teenager. She worked in health
care and as a journalist. She wrote for the
Daily World and was a leader in the El Sal¬
vador Information Office.

That Terry Santana was probably murdered
for her political activity does not come as
a surprise to very many current activists

who know the government's past role in tacitly
allowing, if not directing, violence and re¬
pression against the Kft. That Terry was
primarily a journalist and cultural worker
distributing DECISION TO WIN shows the vital
importance of her political work at present.
She was a threat just for distributing in¬
formation critical of the current administra¬
tion's policies. We can hardly appeal to the
government for change when we know Reagan has
thrown out the rule book governing the C.I.A. ,
the F.B.I. and other military and intelligence
activity.

We mourn Terry Santana's death because it
is a loss to the movement, but her example of
activist media work can only increase our re¬
solve to oppose capitalism and reaction in a
all its forms.

John Hess
Chuck Kleinhans
Julia Lesage

DECISION TO WIN

THE FIRST FRUITS

Filmed in the areas liberated by the Farabundo
Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN), In
the province of Morazan-Northeastem Front-
by Salvadorean film makers.

Direction and Production: "Cero a la Izquierda
Film Collective. Color/Spanish dialogue-
English Subtitles/ 16mm/75 minutes

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